poems

The Shadow asked for more poetry, and has been patiently waiting all this time. Now that the portfolio has been submitted, I may have a few things worth posting. Here are the three poems I read at the P&P reading on Friday evening, in order of their reading. Enjoy, and as always, tell me what you think....

Hastings: A Protest
Facts from 1066 A.D. combined with phrases from Beowulf and the Bayeux Tapestry

Here King Harold killed shot through the eye
No seeing for truth now, blindly sensing pith,
Words past their parsing, smoke by sky devoured.
Sea-serpents scything through our land until
Roads, hedges, fences, boundary-stones are broken.
Our rooted rhythm, sea-broad, sky-deep beginnings
Ripped up, this history cracked on carrion earth.
One wailing woman at the warrior’s pyre
Cries, “This is beauty’s death!” and slashes hands,
Lament the buried gold, words buried deep
With kings when others stepped onto our land
Claimed gold for own. We heaped the mound ourselves,
Burnt till the fire had broken frame of bones,
Hot at the heart.
Yet one courageous knight cried, Who will stand?
Where Harold pledged himself to Duke William
Here King Edward addresses his faithful ones,
A stump still standing on the buried cache,
A language bearing leaves veined with old gold.
This tapestry has not been unattached,
Bayeux unfinished, battle not concluded.
The land is ours, and we will seize it soon
From ocean’s dragons with Word’s shining swords.

Stonington, Connecticut

“Once upon a time”—no, now, this evening,
I saw them wander through the western field.
“The flight of Elves bends barley in the fall,
And then you know the barley has turned ripe.”
At least that’s what I read last night. (I hide
My flashlight until after you have said
Good-night, and then, between the sheets, I read
And sketch the stories on my pillow. Pencil
Makes Elves, Pinocchio, princes dance where white
Has lent itself to lilting. I watch their feet
Impress the softness, prints like seeds, until
You wash the sheets.) I was sitting now
Under the maple tree, and saw them fly!
White wings, white leaves falling to the ground,
The shine of flags and armor on the breeze.
“Mist creeping from the creek between the furrows.”
A line of them walked westward down the furrows.
I saw eyes shining, heard their piping, felt
The ground shake from their feet. The elves are out
In whirling lines, pencil smeared shimmering past
The moon. Come fast! Quickly, before their road
Has disappeared. (I read the fairies’ road
Evaporates. If you come quick enough,
You’ll see it still.) Your papers flutter, wind
Through window. They are leaving, passing. Come!

Tulips
From the second movement of Beethoven’s seventh symphony

We scraped holes round our mother’s maple tree
And buried secrets there, our last few days—
Days drunk with blue, red, sumac-brown.
This fall has hammered once-green trees to gold,
While we have waited in this quiet house,
Rooms hollow, table bare, the bookshelves cleared,
Last August’s zinnias molted in the garden.
I watched the hawks leave while my stiffened hands
Bleached white from clinging to the windowsill,
Unflinching though splinters slashed through my palms.
Then our last afternoon we spent planting
These tulip bulbs, their skin on our chapped hands,
Each peeling bead interred in its own hole,
Roots like your curls drowned deep in sunburned earth.
We stood, our autumn dead beneath our feet—
Farewells, a pavane in the liquid air.
Then I set out, Jason through golden trees,
To roam in discontent in search of all
I’d lost—these days, our innocence, her hands
On the piano, faces in the lamplight.
Glass ship, I voyaged, beat against the sides—
Chained hands bled shattered bone. Trapped Tantalus
Between light sky and floorless green I hung,
An endless traveler, no threshold crossed.
Each time I grasped for home, myself was turned
Into another summer corpse, whirled down,
Thick pile of frozen veins caught in the grass.
But you stayed here, though peace had peeled away,
Bark snapped by ice. You saw the trees relit—
Promise I should have known, for what is sown
In autumn’s tatters and this paper skin
Reblooms in scarlet, vivid, unabashed—
When we are sown, then we shall bloom again
Unshattered like these tulips in May sun.