I fell Through the window of open Sky

A teardrop from the Moon, I fell

Through the window of open Sky and

Dark of Night, into the puddle

Of the Earth, rippling moonlight.

Treading passively, always the stranger

Among my years, only belonging to the language

Of reflected love, and moonstruck.

Always desiring a kiss akin to the brilliance

Of the transient Moon on my face.

Waiting for the cycle of dark to open like a shell and

The borrowed light to stream through my window again,

Like a searchlight.  Oh, to be sought after, and found.

Mildred

Mildred

After your fall, for a time,
You sat staring, blinking
As if in code, some message.
Your face held no clue-
Your ice blue eyes, your skin like milk,
No playful smile, no mischievous twinkle.

Gray tresses gathered in loose curls on your brow,
Drew attention from the knotted stitches, the dried blood,
The shaved place behind your ear.
I held your hand with one hand and traced the ridges
Of your knuckles, your blue river of veins,
Even the age spots like puddles on the ice floe of skin, 
With the other.

We were quiet, you and I.
Waiting for you to come back to me,
I didn’t say much.
Until then,
I hadn’t imagined a life without your voice.

Insouciance

Insouciance

Where is it I watched myself from

those times

I said no, then followed you along anyway.

Those times

I could not find my voice, my legs, my fists-

to scream, to run away, to swing with a fury.

That purple glade, that cold foreign muck that seeped my bones

that kept me compliant,

that something invisible that held me firmly

when everything

in me said this is wrong and I don't know

and stop stop stop.

I felt it under my skin, like an oncoming fever,

like a knife severing

surface from substance.

How like you, and everyone else,

to watch my sideshow

and think, how like her,

without real thought or action

or interest in my opinion, just

Come along little girl, old standby, old lady, dear ghost.

And even now, I would be that ghost among the towering trees

along the quiet path, between the flowers,

following words and my own

thoughts

without a thought to

any of you.

untitled as yet

It began and at first
that is all that I knew; something
had begun.  His nights of vast
sleeplessness edged up to
his days of panic, a riptide
threatening to pull him under.
Dread like a stubborn moon
refused to set, each [morbid] thought
ebbed higher until, for weeks,
it felt
as if
he stood
on tiptoe, nose
only just
above the water,
about to lose the sand
under his feet, wishing for sleep.
Not pitiless, I could not stay awake.
I slept next to him, drifting
off on rafts of moonlight.
For thirty years he'd slept
through my fears and sorrows,
while I stood at the window of night
wishing for ocean
instead of desert.

(or this form)


It began and at first
that is all that I knew; something
had begun.  His nights of vast
sleeplessness edged up to
his days of panic, a riptide
threatening to pull him under.
Dread like a stubborn moon
refused to set, each [morbid] thought
ebbed higher until, for weeks,
it felt as if he stood on tiptoe,
nose
only just
above the water, losing the sand
under his feet, wishing for sleep.
Not pitiless, I slept next to him, drifting
off on rafts of moonlight.
For thirty years he'd slept
through my fears and sorrows,
while I stood at the window of night
wishing for ocean
instead of desert.

Entry for PEACE Poem Project

The Scream     by Susan Demiglio                        

Nothing is small, nothing is great.  Inside us are worlds.

What is small divides itself into what is great, the great into the small.  Edvard Munch

                                   

It seems if I went screaming, out

into the street about mankind’s infidelities,

how it betrays itself over and again,

someone would understand

and would stand shocked—

stock-still—and endorse my scream,

add to my voice their own,

to my horror their own,

and we should amass passersby,

so many that the television cameras could not resist

our resistance.

Children die, always an injustice,

but they are dying today

in mega pixels, in daylight

    to my night, and in the dark.

Bombs explode the faces off of homes;

their jaws dropping on old people,

on families, on children.

Furniture leans out of rooms

toward rubbled streets.

What if I screamed

to wake up the neighbors, then the world.  Inside us are worlds

and I am screaming Munch’s scream, a tortured orange

sunset that circles in

my mouth,

a dented silence,

it is anger and heart break

It is not of no consequence.

Unsaid protests, unstepped marches,

unformed legions all muttering their

disparate dissent,

unjoined passions are not ending the screaming

I cannot hear from the other side of the world.

The New Year

I’m an old hand by now

at promises paid forward earnestly.  

Too soon broken,

like fortune cookies,

we are always looking

for favorable predictions.

Black Dog

I am too cold to leave my bed these mornings

I linger but not too late in the day.

Black dog makes the leap

Then settles down beside me

As naturally as if the bed were his,

As if I had called him up when all I did was stir.

The light is still dim in the room. 

When he turns his head towards me I cannot see his eyes.

As morning light filters in, he studies my face

As if he were contemplating my disease.

He seems to be messaging me a great amount of sympathy with his stare.

This morning he lifted his paw and landed it heavily on my chest,

Like a hand, like a bridge.

Looking for Poetry

Silver light, warm through the window,
warm over the table and across the page.
The words make shadows
in me like empty oak branches
jittery in the wind.

Poetry is

Poetry is a window looking out and a door leading in.

It is the steps cleared of snow, and then the walk.

It is the hollow near your heart that echoes.

Poetry is like small fishes schooling silver in the shallows, water and light and pulsing life that lives longer in the mind than in the hand.

Poetry is a clutch of small black birds noisily springing from the bushes like notes newly released from the sheet music of the day.

It is the whip-snap of sheets on the clothesline.

It is the green memory of spring to the fallen red leaf.

Poetry is the crow-shaped caa that pries me from my sleep and picks at the kernels of my dreams.

It is the derisive emptiness of choices.

It is you, alone in the kitchen at midnight cold, and you underwater, holding your breath with your eyes open.

Poetry is like my first son’s infant fist firmly wrapped around my finger, telling me in that initial moment, I am everything and I am nothing.

Poetry is like the turn-over of dried leaves skipping down the street, the rasping footfalls of the wind.

december

 

a collection of shudders

skeletal

in the early winter

the alder trees react
to the cold breeze                                  

rain drapes and drops

fat tears washing down

limbs and trunks     

spatters

to the color drop  

below the knees

saturated leaves

pressed into each other      

like steeped journal pages

this is the record

the progress of a year

Yellow Jacket

Yellow Jacket

He sat on the dashboard, in

the sun tidying up, stroking

the long antennae

as if combing them into place.

Nothing menacing but

looking at the sturdy striped body with

the undisclosed stinger was enough to

remind me of the danger of small,

quiet things;  those blended thoughts,

packed full of their unexpected power

until someone leans into them. 

after e e cummings ...works in progress....

Dec. 4th


once

i was calling out   comfort

handing out anything warm and dry   

once consolation of  only i while

you 

        sowed displeasure

 reaping stones 

i was   while passing out pillows
weary among the in-depth of 

between you throwing

assured of  wreckage 
while I  weeping sweeping my glass house
   -in front of  strangers of broken-

was gathering dinner 

swallowing rocks




Dec. 5th

to Jon

handsome however you grow
to love you is to know

    you of the once small
 hands  outgrowing   all

my ideals lost on maps of
napkin and drawn of

sticks in sand wave-washed
out-tide rushed
your new face blushed 

    my youthful sketches  

thoughts like  twining rosy vetches

i am clinging   salt-soaked seaside
love-draped   nodding tide

of mother

Rewrite Turquoise

No Taj Mahal

I am the kind of woman
some man should build a pool for.  I am

the kind  of woman who appreciates
the reflection of the whole sky.  One 

who delights in clouds daffodil yellow,
clouds the color of sweet plums,

clouds as tall as masted ships
and clouds that hold lightning like

fireflies in a jar.
I will spend my hour of free time
languorously

swimming through that sky.
Pool of stars, pool of morning,
pool of heaven.

I am the kind of woman who wants
a small darling house, next to that pool, one

that blocks no view and lets in the light,
every light the sun and moon have to offer.

I am the kind of woman who is
jealous of the cat and dog that sleep 

in the pane of light cast on the floor like a mat.   

In spring I will bring in
yellow forsythia branches
to dress my blue vases,

in the winter I, like a snake charmer,
will draw out the white amaryllis.  I don't ask for much. 

I've learned not to ask for much-- my life
has been a workshop for that.  But.

One turquoise pool, clear as a conscience

catching every point of light, beside a modest home.

As long as I am asking, after years of not,

may it overlook a pasture, a green pasture

full of emerald-bright and lapis blue dragonflies

and may it all

overlook the ocean.  

I am asking.

Turquoise

Turquoise

I am the kind of woman someone should build a pool for.
The kind who appreciates the reflection of the whole sky, one who
delights in clouds daffodil yellow and clouds the color of bruises and
clouds as tall as buildings, clouds that hold lightning like
fireflies in a jar.
I will spend my hour of free time languorously
swimming through that sky.  I am the kind of woman
who wants a small, darling house that blocks no view
and lets in the light, every light the sun and moon have to offer
and who is jealous of the cat and dog
that sleep in the pane of light cast on the floor
like a mat.   I will bring in the yellow forsythia branch
in spring and raise the white amaryllis like a charmer of snakes
in the winter.  I don't ask for much, I've learned not to
ask for much, my life has been a workshop for that.  But.
One pool beside a home, one turquoise pool
clear as a conscience, catching every point of light.
As long as I am asking, after years of not
asking, may it overlook a pasture, a green pasture
full of emerald-bright dragonflies and electric blue dragonflies
and may it all
overlook the ocean.  I am asking.

Direction

Fog-infected morning, cold

and damp as a fever-broken brow.

They were lost to me beyond the fog,

geese overhead, all noise

and no substance, like memories,

calling back and forth to each other.

Me, land-locked, with places to go

and no wings.  I gave them up long ago,

turned them in with my slighter dreams.
Every fall I wish them back.  

Gladly I would fly away, answer the call.

Happy to know where I was going.

The Pond

Was it more sky than water?
Of course, more water, but the sky
was evident in the reflection.
The pond stared unblinking
speaking only gray clouds until
the muted daylight was gone. Geese,
two of them, skidded to a stop
across it just as night cleared
its throat.

The Heron

Counts it bad luck
to stand in water all day
one leg wet is enough
he tucks the other tightly away
his needle-beak ever poised
above his marshy dinner plate
he doesn't even like fish
you can see it in his reserve
that stiff narrow gray disgust

Clarity, The Answer

Clarity

                                Is the clarity, the simplicity, an arriving or an emptying out?

                                If the heart persists in waiting, does it begin to lessen?

                                If we are always good does God lose track of us?  Jack Gilbert, The Answer

If we are always good, does God lose track

of us?  What comfort is there in hoping now-

the heart nearer the end than the beginning?

You lie beside me doubting, numbering fears

the way I number blessings.  You wake

in the night and feel something important

standing there.  Sleep lost to you, you rise

to stare at your gray reflection under the bathroom light. 

There is your clarity, your promise, as long as the eyes

open and the heart beats.  There is your revelation.  
The silence in you

is absolute and inconvenient.  I cannot enter into it

with you.  I kiss you and want to tell you

in a meaningful way:  I remember

a morning at the beach when I was a girl.

It was so early it was both dawn and night. 

The wind pulled at my hair and stirred the grasses

where I sat on the white sand dune. 

My family was far down the shore. 

Near me, a heron rose blue-gray against the palest

part of the sky.  The music of the waves

played for me alone, and I knew that it

kept playing when I was gone.


This is a Response poem to Jack Gilbert's  The Answer.  Here is Mr. Gilbert's poem:

Is the clarity, the simplicity, an arriving
or an emptying out?  If the heart persists
in waiting, does it begin to lessen?
If we are always good does God lose track
of us?  When I wake at night, there is 
something important there.  Like the humming
of giant turbines in the high-ceilinged stations 
in the slums.  There is silence in me,
absolute and inconvenient.  I am haunted
by the day I walked through the Greek village 
where everyone was asleep and somebody began
playing Chopin, slowly, faintly, inside
the upper floor of a plain white stone house.

Enough of Fairy Tales

When will I be good enough for you

to love?  Shall I weave thistles

into clothes?  Turn straw to gold

enough ransom to buy back your favor?

There are fables enough of wicked

parents-mostly mothers.  Stories

peopled with forlorn children-mostly daughters- the purer

their hearts the more dire the circumstance.

Maybe if fathers told the stories- some fathers-

instead of mothers, the daughters

would all be safe long before the necessary evils threatened.

Mothers adore happy endings, morality

plays, coated salty and sweet.  

All’s well that ends well enough.

My story.  It’s too sad.  There is never

a happy ending.  It only begins.

Once she had a father.  And then,

it ends.

Rewrite Mimosa

MIMOSA

The mimosa bristled pink outside my bedroom window,

its leaves collapsed in the dark, closed like rows of praying hands. 

Each summer night I fell asleep with the scent

of it, soft and powdery, clinging to my dreams. 

When I was rewriting my days in September

with sharpened number 2s still tagged

with cleanest pink erasers and it was nearly officially fall,

mornings broke wet and chilly,

heavy as wool blankets left on the clothesline overnight.

By noon the heat would build, would stifle,

so mornings I shivered in shirt sleeves, waiting

beside the dewy green wisteria, past its purple prime.

Uncomfortable in my own new shoes,

still stiff and shiny, 

I tried to summon confidence

before the bus arrived. 

Sometimes I plucked a feathery mimosa flower and

tucked it behind my ear on the way to the end of the driveway.

I imagined myself pretty and exotic, brave for being different,

like a Haight-Ashbury hippy in my red-neck town.

Overhead a single mockingbird

layered one song over another.  Romantic that I was,

I began my listening believing

it sang because its little bird heart overflowed

but I knew it was only borrowing from its nature.

The first notes seemed plaintive, for the lost night and dreams;

liquid, fluid, much like  my mother gently moving me

into the day and off to junior high.

As the bus topped the hill, 

that unctuous bird became sharp and shrill,

still carrying on, nagging like a conscience. 

Impostor and thief of songs!  I left the flower on the lawn,

too soon convinced we were both liars.