Not that I want to but I need to float off for a bit from here. Please come back! I’ll likely continue to post on Instagram, but less often. It’s time to FOCUS.
I’ll leave you with two responses to a prompt from the retreat, both using a poetic structure listed below. I paid attention to the rhyme scheme, you’ll see, but not the line lengths.
Bref Double, One
The mist rolls, sheer scalloped grace.
Curls floating past trees
echoing the canopy’s curve,
hurrying somewhere I want to go.
The hills rise sturdy and silent.
Clouds come and go and leave no trace.
Mountains like a tolerant mother meeting
a toddler’s antics, squatting low
to grin and meet him, where he is, face
to face, nose to nose, abiding
in connection, eschewing haste.
Such moments seem more than we deserve.
Sturdy love. Isn’t it a disgrace
to reject what’s here, adopt strictures,
go quiet and lose our heart, our verve?
Bref Double, Two
Tardiva points, a flurry
of misdirection, while clouds
creep and float, aligned with
the mountains. Purpose.
Or is it conspiracy? Ridges hold blue,
their stillness a contrast to sliding
mist, while gauze clouds above
wander, roll, tell secrets unheard of
by us. Crickets act as jury
to the crime of vacancy
while low-lying lichen, furry
almost, in ruffled patterns, gifts
the eye. Yellowed leaves, the color of curry
hint at how soon the season’ll leave us bereft.
Look at the clipped grasses! The curb with its
divets. Tell me, could the ribbons of tar
shining in the midday sun be
any more gorgeous?
I’m waiting
for the light to turn, for the grey
hulk of hospital to leave the rearview —
waiting for the return of things
or the start of them, or even the
end.
Impatience is a surly thief!
And, shopping, a deficient religion.
I should have known better.
By the time I arrive,
the capris of summer are picked over.
Meanwhile, my sister’s heart flutters
in uncertain alarm and children
dead from cholera in Yemen pile up,
200, 300.
Somehow, I’m alive and shopping for pants.
In the swanky interior, the clack of my sandals
on the polished geometry stirs
sorrow. How it is these days.
“This is it,” my shoes percuss. “This is it.”
Going one place to another, you are never
anywhere but here.
Impatience acts the rude interloper
while uncertainty takes you to your knees.
Later, but not much, I slap my notebook
on the shiny ebon surface of a grand piano
and pull a pen out of my hair. One of
two. There, in the sunlit atrium, a prop of luxury
holds my weight. To one side, the familiar
bronze statue of girl and dog and to the other,
an absence I can’t get used to even though
the beloved fountain’s been gone for years.
(All those pennies tossed and wishes made
two little tow-heads at my side —
where are they now — pennies, wishes, and
boys turned brown-haired men?)
Regret followed far enough
takes you to love.
The Tiffany’s clerk paces
behind jewel-filled cases, not sure
what to make of a woman writing in fury
in the middle of the morning, in the middle of
the atrium and where did
that notebook come from anyway?
the ribbons of tar, the cement divets polished geometry, regret, bronze.
Oh tissue first, silver medallion next and finally,
the tasteful grey bag. The clerk chirps
“Have a good day of shopping,” even as
my ribs smolder about to combust, one hour
being thirty minutes too long.
How much time do we have? Ever?
Tick. Tick. Swipe. Delete.
How much time do we have
to be kind, to be kind,
to preserve the republic?
Fairness gone amok in every quarter
makes a girl want to cry —
even a girl who never cries.
No wonder the ordinary sound
of sandals clacking on
polished tile calls out, “Wake up!
This is it!” rattling up a
ferocious grief twinned
with gratitude.
“These are no ordinary times.” Say.
Repeat. Do nothing. The acts
held in reserve depend on gross
miscalculations of risk — as if we
have time and time and more time?
Tick. Tick. Delete. Swipe.
Regret followed far enough
leads to damnation.
Would the clerk in Tiffany’s understand
why a woman wails in the bathroom
corridor given our collective failure
or would she choose not to hear?
You lean your frantic frame against the
silent instrument, hoping to leave
behind more than the echoes of impatience
or a sweaty hand print that the cleaners
will have to buff off later.
Let me be kind. Let me speak up. Let me pause long enough to give thanks.
Regret expressed deeply enough always
turns into prayer.
The ribbons of tar, the polished geometry, vanished pools and children, wishes gathered and held in regions unknown.
A ditty from a prompt in class this week. “Peas and the rice done, done, done” comes from a song sung by bondmen and women during the age of slavery.
Speckle, spackle lint
Globe, orb, light
Star prick, potato cut – Fie!
Cookie cutter, duster buster —
Done. Peas and the rice, done, done, done.
In the dark, we tag along in
ignorant clumps. Safety
in numbers? One arm
finds a rail, a toe stubs
rock. “Ho there!”
A single organism, we turn.
Out on the deck early, a
powdery blue sky offers its
solace — beauty
that can be referred to again
and again, lasting and constant.
Except it’s not
lasting. Or constant.
Look how swiftly the clouds
cover the setting and
glorious moon — in the short interval
it took you to dash inside for your camera.
What happens when the shifting
markers of beauty verge
toward extinction, not merely sway
and decay with time?
“Ho! There! Ho!” No one
corrects course. The inevitable crash
sparks discussion, as if pinpointing the
cause of the wound trumps all other action.
In this season of cold, shattered bones and
bruises are nothing next to damnation.
Who knew lying would win
the hearts and minds of so many?
Sprinkle, dash, salt and mire.
Blood stream, character, impossible glow. Peas and the rice, done, done, done.
Catastrophic, relentless capture
of the future: too swift to
block; too pervasive to illuminate.
It threatens to be so cold, there
are warnings.
The party lanterns bob and strain on the deck
rail, hanging, forgotten, so long
past their June flings. Remember June?
The moon hangs like a darling,
punctuating the morning with
soft, ridiculously sweet loveliness.
Just above the eave – “Ho! There!”
She runs inside for her camera, but it’s too late. The grey fuzz of
cloud shoved by a cold, cold
wind has changed everything.
She missed the moon
but caught a dream of power — a friend gathering her skirts to make an entrance. Stately. Invested. Prepared. She will
study everything, consider all the
players, account for the force of history. Seventy years of wisdom coming to bear.
Such a dream!
Mighty beech. Singular gate.
Ho there! The icy air seeps
through the window frame.
In the kitchen, you watch the
tiny grain moths zig-zag
against their doom. Slap. Slap.
The dog pants beside the fire.
Dots and dabs of light on the festive tree
blur after you take off your glasses,
offering another version of pretty.
Remember Wallace Stevens
trying to decide which to prefer:
the blackbird’s cry or just after?
As if calibrating how much reality you can stomach is anything like weighing
the relative beauties of music and silence!
We slide into a
Bosch painting – celebrities being eaten by plants,
destroyers appointed to protect, eggs sprouting legs. Babies cry all the way
from Aleppo. We are
cursed and lack the explaining mythology.
Stab, slice, potato cutter — fie!
How quaint a cut to the finger. Apply pressure,
glue and presto — no more blood.
There goes the moon, behind its periwinkle
shroud. Time feels a foe this season.
Arctic air whips up its icy announcements
and someone, somewhere takes it as proof
that everything is as it always was.
Who will measure the cold and with what instruments
after they round up the scientists?
They’ll say: ‘Study moles and circuits. Or lumps of coal.’
“Ho there!” How about darkness? Make
a chart that nobody will believe
and store it somewhere in Canada.
The money will disappear along
with the truth, so button up.
“Ho there! Ho.” We smile and drink. We bundle up. We exchange
sweets and trinkets while frigid air sweeps down from the north.
So, go ahead – dream of power
or dream of extinction. Dream of
capturing the moon with your
bare hands. But when you wake,
with thermal underwear and corrective lenses on, gather your skirts and make an entrance. Somewhere. And speak.
“Ho there. Ho” Peas and the rice done, done, done.
This is a retelling of the ancient Irish story of Deirdre, The Princess of Sorrows. I’ve hewed to the tale in places and departed in others. To read a wonderful translation, look for Thomas Kinsella’s The Tain.
I was named after Deirdre. In the late seventies, I was lucky enough to spend a semester in Dublin participating in a program run by Kinsella. Also I studied Old Irish at UMass and looked at some of the text in the original.
Deirdre
In the early dark, her fetal feet fluttered hard, making her mother burp with contentment. Or was it indigestion?
Two weeks before birth and already Deirdre was kicking up a ruckus!
The local Druid stopped by and Druids never just stop by. “There is no reason I can name,” he said, “which is not the same as having no reason.”
News of this one and that one followed, he was a genealogist after all in addition to bard and soothsayer. Clearly, he dilly-dallied, waiting for a sign.
Deirdre’s Mother glanced out the window at the early February sky where royal-grey clouds scudded. You could almost taste the rain coming.
In spite of her mistrust, she felt the need to pull watercress from the spring ’round back in his honor. Its peppery brightness would be good with the sweet potatoes already roasting in the fire. And that’s how he got his sign. The unborn spoke.
Imagine now: the swollen ankle of a pregnant woman stepping over the threshold to run around back for some bitter greens and the unborn Deirdre screaming. Deirdre screaming at the precise moment her mother was neither fully inside nor fully outside. Who knew wombs carried sound like that?!
The Druid raised an eyebrow, just the one. He might have clucked his tongue, too. “We all know what that means.” Deirdre’s mother didn’t in fact have any idea what that meant. She was frozen with uncertainty. Should she step out or step back in? Fear or something else prickled her scalp.
“I shall return,” the Druid said, nudging past.
She stepped out. “Don’t they all say that?” The tension had tamped down her respect. The grass was alive waiting for the rain, she and the clouds so full.
And then the little one came.
Deirdre’s tiny head emerged plastered with dark hair and not an hour past, he showed up. Druids know things. He issued the King’s claim over the baby. Little did they know what carnage would ensue.
Alone again later, Deirdre’s mother whispered to her, “‘Tis nothing to make promises. The King wants you and well I’d like to be Queen of the Sidhe!”
But there was action behind the claim. Soon King Conchobor bundled mother and daughter off to a small hut far from any village or crossroads. Deirdre’s mother missed her watercress and how the light shone in the basin of water by the spring.
She watched her daughter blossom into a dark beauty. “The King thought he could hide this?” she scowled. With hair the color of a raven’s wing, lips as red as blood on new fallen snow, and skin as pearly as a winter moon, Deirdre’s beauty was inescapable.
There weren’t just cattle roaming about, mind. There was the cow herder, too. Noisu traveled up and down the valley with the herd. He was no clod of dirt to look upon himself. He had warm brown eyes, beautiful hands, and skin bronzed by the sun. The work made him more than sturdy.
And, he wasn’t blind.
Deirdre’s mother was no fool, so she did not forbid his coming ’round or Deirdre’s stepping out, lest it energized the pair. Besides there was only silence from the King.
Noisu heard things in the treetops and in the gurgle of meandering cricks and in the cows’ gentle lowing. He knew when the King’s army was coming and why. In the haste of passion, he told Deirdre to pack a kerchief with her things and led her off. Into the woods they ran. They ate nuts and berries and the occasional salmon. On beds of moss, they tore at each other’s backs, rising up after with leaves in their hair. They outwitted the soldiers for many a season.
Deirdre’s mother prayed for the pair.
Even the best trackers couldn’t hunt them down. Until one day they did. Talk about sorrow! Did I mention that she is called, Deirdre of the Sorrows?
As men came to the lovers’ aid, an army was formed. Battles ensued. But never mind that. As with so many things, only the final moments mattered.
When the King’s men finally caught up with the pair the first thing they did was slit Noisu’s throat while Deirdre watched. The soldiers were economical, pleased to achieve their slaying and torture in one violent act. Afterwards they wrenched a sobbing Deirdre off the ground and hoisted her into a chariot, Noisu’s blood spattered all over her tunic.
“The King’s been waiting for you,” the driver crowed and leered and then leered some more and snorted.
Deirdre would play the card of Death. The King might have the stronger army but he couldn’t keep her alive now could they? She wriggled herself toward the edge of the chariot and before the driver knew what was happening, launched herself out. She was instantly dead, head dashed upon the rocks. Later the crows would eat her brains and pick out her eyes.
The King would not be pleased.
Deirdre’s mother knew the exact moment of her daughter’s death, as mothers sometimes do. She was sitting by the fire and knitting and wishing that the night could hold her down in something other than a cold embrace.
Well then imagine the delight
A celebration of their leaving
A real washing gladness
Fluttering wings to spray water there
Unsought, unbidden, unforced
The rightness of their leaving
To overcome the changes,
how the glow highlights a cheek.
All these years
the beach-tired kids pile rocks in a ring
I marshal scant stores of optimism
Under the hawthorn tree
amid spaded greenery
a real washing gladness
unsought, unbidden, unforced.
There, in the bowl, a celebration of light,
a robin! Dusty grey wings
underslung by its carroty-rust breast
The ancient sway of the elements.
Wood lath strapping criss-
crossed. I leave,
to flick off flood lamp, retreating.
The fire takes.
Ageless hypnotic source
softening ribcage, relaxed gaze,
setting down of worry
communal, together by fire
mammals through and through
on the verge of everything.
The seated shadowed young, facing
a crackle. More crackles.
Retreating. I did not expect
to be taken up
ever so needed as it happened
soon to be gone.
Busy but not busy enough
To drive up. His list: clip-on fan,
shower tote. An invitation
to the ancient sway of the elements.
I don’t try to read their expressions
all the things I’ve wanted to do
a place hung together by tired kids
a setting down of worry – remind
me – ascendancy to the deeper
ageless fire, softening of ribcage
evenings and the briny refreshment
The driveway, the shoes in the bin
boy/manhood that over spills
water on a sunny day
on a whim in the front garden
the large glass bowl
its delight flapping,
unsought, as it happened
Scant stores of resolve. Remind me
please. The fire takes. Mammals
through and through
Grass scraped from the center
Kids pile rocks in a ring
The fire takes
Cerebral connections lose to
the deeper sway of the elements.
I don’t try to read their relaxed
gaze. The fire crackles,
highlights a cheek, a place,
a chair appears. His list: a clip-on fan,
A shower tote.
Hunks of citrine and rose quartz
for his new life
cause me to trip
well then imagine the delight
a real washing gladness
unsought, unbidden, unforced
to drive up the next morning and see
boy/manhood wings
signature breast, fluttering wings
The rightness of their leaving
The quiet that will follow
Under the hawthorn
amid the long-spaded greenery
A deduction in other words
dropped, to be taken up, imagine!
An invitation to all the things
I’ve wanted to do –
flick off the flood lamps
setting down of worry
together by fire.
Along the side, he gathers his
things.
A shower tote, a hunk of citrine.
Trip. Worry. Chant. Overcome
the changes fluttering wings
the quiet that will follow
criss-crossed scraped shadowed
unforced red-knotted beads
count them, remind me please, all
the things I’ve wanted to do?
As if the nervous system
ever so needed, a washing gladness
I marshal a wiggle of fire, peer
out the glass, how the glow
highlights a cheek plane
Ascendancy. Their being on
the verge of everything.
While it’s true that Toy Story Three will make a parent on the edge of the empty nest cry, I took some satisfaction when this unpolished response to a prompt made someone in my writing circle cry.
