I fall in love with
what cannot be mine
a lilt of violins
mellow moonglow
glimmering over
freshly fallen snow
a bugbit maple leaf
a pale pink columbine
I want to grasp and hold
the glint and shine of
sunlight on the lake
that look I’ve known
in loving eyes
to never let them go
to own and keep them
evermore enshrined.
Not possible.
Impossible.
It cannot be.
Why even now
I fall in love again
with you
impossibly.
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NOTES FOR A SONNET
The snow will make no noise, but clasp the ground in silence,
slowly muffling, snuffing-out, all but the sound of silence.
A blood moon will rise beyond the last wisps of withered wheat
and deepening chills of wind blow circles around the silence.
Old uncle at the festivities, mostly a piece of history, still
he will hear a calliope, watch a merry-go-round in silence.
Sometimes the songs my mother never sang to me
drift on the blown flurries over her stony mound of silence.
So many poems have simply died for a lack of sounding;
are locked, like the terminal years of Ezra Pound, in silence.
What cannot be said, once and for all, howls dreadfully
like a two-headed dog that continues to hound the silence.
It was too early, earlier, and now it’s become too late
to fix what broke or rewind the clocks unwound by silence.
See how kindness is kin to snow in the darkness—
flakes floating down to a stately, dumbfounded silence.
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THE SNOW WILL MAKE NO NOISE
The slight interfering noise towards the end of the audio was contributed by my dog, Chloë , who was nearby, lying on her back with her paws in the air, wriggling and panting with joy.
Too much of something in the way of angels
has been flying overhead and dropping
digital illusions on our sullen task and grief—-
a moon-beamed manna in a splendid light
with sorceries to turn a cynic desert
of deep yearning into rivers of belief.
Shortly hereafter there will be too many
books to read, for which there is no need.
Great is our gratitude, and much too much
we eat, we drink and much we almost say
before it is too late, but don’t say after all;
we stagger off to bed with our big heads
and rise at daybreak like a tribe possessed
to gulp our coffee, drive a bee line to the mall.
Shortly hereafter there’ll be hell to pay, but
at the least, we will have had a feast.
Too many leaves have fallen, cut loose
last night when a wild wind woke us with its
hellish howl among the maples, ash, and oak;
now in the morning light they lie in layers
thick, damp, limp as tiny landlocked wings
whose former ties to angels broke.
Shortly hereafter, there’ll be lots of raking
we must do, before the work is through.
.
.
SHORTLY HEREAFTER
Maple yellow, maple red, I see
the killing splendor of your canopy
outside my window as I lie abed
gathering this morning’s go-ahead,
whispering this small apostrophe—
how gracefully you ride time’s tyranny
and know exactly how to be a tree,
rubrics never read, sermons unsaid,
maple yellow, maple red.
Soon you will die, to some degree,
turn prickly gray as colors flee;
but you’ll grow back the brights you shed.
This time next year, I may be dead
while you, most likely once again, may be
maple yellow, maple red.
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MAPLE YELLOW, MAPLE RED
“…gathering swallows twitter in the sky.”
—John Keats, “To Autumn”
.
Come autumn, gathering swallows twitter in the sky;
their song portends oncoming bitter from the sky.
Chickadees hop amid the rose hips ‘til
in pursuit of blue they flitter toward the sky.
Lingering gladioli lean along the fence
aiming one last blossom-spitter at the sky.
Indian summer, you old scoundrel, heartbreak
mocker of the stars, you are a counterfeiter of the sky.
Earlier darkness doesn’t faze the ever-blinking
radio red eye of the transmitter in the sky.
Electronics do not know this is the melancholy
season, though they sense a jitter in the sky.
It is the season when things die, return to haunt
in guises ravelled by cloud-knitters in the sky.
When I am old…am I already old?…then I
will head, shed all this earthly litter, for the sky.
O hold me tight tonight, you cold, you bright
immutable, you ever-fickle glitter in the sky.
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AUTUMN IN THE SKY
There used to be a wish for your return
here in my heart, a craving for your smile
so I could bask in it again, a little while
and know the worthiness for which I yearn—
the love you brought, that taught me to unlearn
all anger, sadness, sense of alien exile
and know a place where we together could beguile
from seeming ashes, embers, constancy of burn.
But so much grief has been, and change,
a certain strangeness I believed could never be
has crept into my unbelief and now seems true:
you would not want this world, so rearranged
by time, which once so cruelly stole you from me,
and now, incredibly, is stealing me from you.
.
Among other things
the forsythia blooms
indoors, in water,
just as one presumes–
its tiny yellow openings
burst into day stars
forcing spring
into the winter gloom.
But now the branches
lately cut, are doomed
never to know again
how golden plumes might
ride together on a wind
might bow and swing
among other things.
Separation marks them
for a loamy tomb where
dry sticks end,
sink, are consumed.
Or so it seems, except
for a remembering
a homesickness for sun
an urge toward wings
and what it means to be
a glow in the brume
among other things.
They are not mean, but meaning to be kind,
the ones whose work it is to bring him here–
merely a job to do, to hold and steer
an old man who is frail, half-blind,
toward a sunny bench where he may find
companionship in leafy atmosphere–
perhaps a little bird to tweet some cheer
and take him out of his own mind.
Here, everything is new under the sun:
the spill of light climbs up a tree
a little breast of sand temples the ants
a chickadee bows like a tiny nun
upon a branch, to hear the pink soliloquy
of a wild rose, dressed for the dance.
All is circumstance.
Seated between mirth and agony
no longer wishing to foresee
no longer slave to memory
his ancientness, still as a garden gnome,
waits for whoever comes to fetch him home.
.
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IN A GARDEN OF GIVENS
Maple yellow, maple red, I see
the killing splendor of your canopy
outside my window as I lie abed
gathering this morning’s go-ahead,
whispering this small apostrophe—
how gracefully you ride time’s tyranny
and know exactly how to be a tree,
rubrics never read, sermons unsaid,
maple yellow, maple red.
Soon you will die, to some degree,
turn prickly gray as colors flee;
but you’ll grow back the brights you shed.
This time next year, I may be dead
while you, most likely once again, may be
maple yellow, maple red.
.
.
MAPLE YELLOW, MAPLE RED
Great-uncle August
peers out of the family tintype much
too seriously for a young boy.
Is he searching the darkness
out beyond the flash and smoke,
out here where we are yet unborn?
Probably the stiffer wool of Sunday
knee-pants itches to obsession
and his good boots pinch.
There are things he’d rather be doing
than holding still, staring at the birdie.
But this is what it takes to make a picture.
It is important. Momentous.
Archival. You can tell
because nobody smiles.
Once the posing’s done, there will be
loosening of buttons, ties, laughter
and lemonade out on the porch.
Great-uncle August’s eyes will
maybe twinkle then. There might be hugs.
This is the part we’ll never see.
.
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GREAT UNCLE AUGUST
littleoldladywho.net 