The cat sits under pink flowers

 

The cat sits under pink flowers.
The cat sits in sunlight.
The sunlight blurs like golden dust
blowing between her and me.

Her white-gold fur melts into wind,
into light and dust.
It blurs. It becomes pink flowers.

I no longer know where each one ends.
I no longer know where I begin.
Am I beside the cat?
Or is the cat
(alive or dead,
or merely imagined) –
is she inside me?

Volcano. I.

Magma flows beneath a bed of ferns:
fire fretted through lace,
dendritic leaves of elemental silver.
Birds here spark and rise, singing glass-shatter.

I fear the birds are mostly a delusion.
Ice and embers share a voice,
as does the chink of cooling lava.
And, honestly, the magma
is just part of the diorama.

Stepping back, you see the silver ferns flank an automaton
beneath the window of the north side-chapel.
Ticking and unwinding, she plays Bach on a celeste.

Her face, tipped slightly, glows harlequin, for
she has summoned the spirit of the window.
Blue is cobalt, red is gold,
that peculiar yellow is uranium oxide.
Molten light shards captive, bound in lead.

But beneath the net,
a broad, bright, flow-ruffled sea:

the parable of Christ,
unshod,
walking on the magma.

Carrying a Raccoon

This is an old poem, from 2008. But I figured it should be here. It's always been one of my favorites. And yes, it is based on a dream.



I am walking through a subway tunnel,
going to the opera,
carrying a raccoon.

The tunnel is slabs of concrete,
like an overpass, a parking structure.
People are walking here. Daylight leaks
through bolted junctions.

And the raccoon is small as a plush toy,
bright-eyed, infinitely precious.
I carry it through the concrete tunnel,
going to the opera.

Except when I arrive at the opera,
I have lost my ticket. I persuade
the ushers to let me in
to search for it.

It is not on the ground floor
under the tonguelike balcony,
nor in the climbing tiers
of balconies like bracket fungus.
I climb the switchback ramps,
searching, pleading,
carrying a raccoon.

Without a ticket, I cannot see the opera --
"La Traviata," sung in Russian. The first act
has begun. The doors are closed.
I carry my raccoon down the ramps,
and into the casino

which is also a lunch counter
where shabby men eat hot dogs
with bland yellow mustard.
I buy two: one for me,
one for the raccoon.

The opera rolls over us, mingling
with the jangle of slot machines.
It echoes off the concrete slabs,
the overpass pillars.
Violetta dies in Russian.
"Lyubov moya!" "My love!" I weep,
sitting on cracked vinyl, eating a hot dog,
holding my raccoon.

An Elaboration of Roses

Since our writers' conference, I've been working on some experiments. One is finding ways to "make the familiar strange" by taking one idea and pushing it in various directions, like ripples expanding from a pebble dropped into a pond. This poem is one of the results.

A rose of beaten gold; a rose of brutal anthracite.
A rose in granite on the wall of a cathedral;
Another in stained glass, on the robe of the Virgin.

A rose traced in frost-feathers on my winter window:
A rose remembered from the memory of its scent.
A rose created from the memory of a rose.

A rose so tiny, ants carry it through tunnels;
Another so vast its petals blanket moutains.
An emphemeral rose appears and vanishes in a summer cloud;
Another grows in crystal beneath the earth. Each petal takes a millennium.
A rose is crushed by the foot of a mammoth.
The last rose blooms beneath a dying sun.

A blind beggar grasps a rose, scattering its petals.
A thief has hidden a ruby in the heart of another.
A rose droops forgotten by the bed of the princess with her lover;
Its stem bears the bite-marks of a slave-girl
Who danced beneath mosaic roses at sunset.

A rose in Java blooms in an old Dutch garden;
It blooms again in interstellar space, from data
Salvaged from the frozen planet of a long-dead star.
Heraldic copper roses whirl on the gears of a military airship.
The red silk rose on a Mayan blouse echoes the glory of the Blessed Virgin.

A rose is traced through star-points, to form a constellation.
A rose with teeth nips at the hand that plucks it.
Roses wither in a glass dome as the air is pumped away.
A rose tattooed on the breast of a murdered woman
Echoes the one left on the doorstep of the wrong house.
When it is not returned, there will be a drowning.

I remember a rose I once smelled in a garden.
The bushes sleep now. Snow is falling
Beyond the window, where the steam of rose-hip tea
Freezes on the glass, in feathered roses.

In April

In April, the giraffe
Is covered with red roses.
Roses bloom in her map of splotches,
Her net of pale square rivers,

As April browses, big-bellied, among acacias --
Aflame, rose-covered, infinitely gravid.
The lions sleep: a peaceable kingdom.


Easter pales the horizon. The world is once again
Reborn. All creatures now
Bring forth their hopeful young,
Their singing dreams of freedom.

O, ecstasy, to see such dawning!
The roses cast their petals down
In April, the giraffe.

Leaf

A "random word" text from my Internet-based writing group. In this case, the prompt was "leaf". Random-word texts are supposed to be written with minimal reflection and editing. "What does this word suggest to you?" They can become the seeds for later stories. 



I grip the leaf with all my limbs, gnaw through the stem, and fall. Wind catches me at once, spins me at random, tosses me above the trees and whirls me out over the river. The updraft fails, and I drift downward, rocking in my cradle of air. We skim above the surface of the water, then settle and touch. The current grips the leaf, and once again I whirl, careening past rocks where the water folds and purls in smooth transparent ridges. Then onward, into the center of a vast slow eddy. The water hangs brown and deep beneath us, sliding over speckled stones the color of sparrows’ eggs.

A carp surfaces and nudges the leaf, then turns and sinks, his vast reticulate side merging with the palmate fluke of his tail. The leaf is sinking. Already its upper concave surface is pooled with water where minute, transparent life-motes dance, twinkling with cilia.

I consider joining them. But such a life is not within my power. I am a creature of the wind, the clouds, and the tossing trees. I balance on the edges of the submerging leaf and spin out my gossamer wings. The carp returns, a massive head and eye. My wings spread wide, grasping air. The great mouth opens on the arched cave of tongue and gills. I catch the wind before the pale lips close around the leaf, and pull it under.

Announcement (poem)

I heard the first line of the poem on the Metro PA system, and it got me thinking. Since the recent tunnel-fire (which hospitalized over 80 people, and killed one,) we have all been a bit nervous.



The train ahead of us is experiencing a medical emergency.
An individual has fallen on the tracks,
and the train refuses to go on.

Support personnel are arriving on the scene
in various and sundry vehicles -
five in one, sixteen in another,
like clown cars in the circus.
Please stay calm.
Be sure to report any suspicious packages
or unseemly behavior.
Emergency instructions can be found
on the plasma TV screens located around the platform,
as well as placards at the exits of each car.
Please remain seated, unless otherwise instructed.
Then, please obey all instructions.

Medical personnel have currently arrived.
They have assisted the fallen individual,
and are now attempting to comfort the distressed train.
A licensed vehicular therapist
asks whether the individual reminded it
of its father, its mother, its early childhood.
The train takes the offered kleenex
and wipes oil-tears from its headlights.

The therapist asks the train
whether it considers itself a danger to itself or others,
and offers to get it off the line.
Uniformed support personnel are edging closer,
holding hypodermic syringes and crow-bars.

We are pleased to inform you that
the disabled train is being moved,
gently and with consideration,
to a safe place where it can receive professional assistance.

The emergency support team is dispersing,
having removed all suspicious packages
and questioned all persons of interest.
They have piled into their vehicles and sped away.

This train will continue momentarily,
as soon as we have received permission.
Thank you for your patience.
We apologize for any inconvenience.

Prompt poem (four)

(What will you do with a scrap of paper, a sharpened pencil, and the moon?)


My prison window shows a patch of sky,
So every night I draw a picture of the moon.

Shape after shape, marching on the wall,
They grow, then wane, then swell to full again.

New-moon nights, I draw a patch of black,
Scribbled to reveal the stonework underneath.
Full moon is a blind white eye,
Gibbous a cut potato.
Crescent moon is a knife.

After a few months, I stop drawing shapes.
Instead I write moon-words, one each night:
Pearl, pregnant, slab, sickle, thumbnail, coal.
Then back:
Slash, feral, howl, afraid, astonished.

Word by word, I limn the poem of sky.
Of my prison. Of my guilt. Of my missed oblivion.

Prompt poem (three)

(The prompt for this one: Remember your voice.)

Here in space,
nobody can hear you do much of anything.

Scream, certainly --
which is what you do the first few days.
Or weep, or moan, or curse your fate,
ringing the full changes on profanity
in several half-remembered languages.

Finally, you get used to the quiet.
You start hearing the subtle difference
between the radiant hush of the stars
and the muteness of your drifting body.

At last you find peace. Or perhaps
a simple acquiescence.
You stopped screaming long ago.

You turn like the moon,
facing sun, then shadow,
then sun again.

Your gloved fingers eclipse the Earth,
silhouetted on vacant blue.

You close your eyes and drift through silence.

Here in space, nobody can hear you pray.

Prompt poem too

(Another prompt from Facebook: "Wishing for night")


It will come at last:
this sweet cessation, this tiny, vagrant death,
this rambling through dim fields of dream.

It will come again.
And end far, far too soon
when light puddles the horizon:

this daily burning, this uncouth clarity,
this louche, foul revenant we fled in sleep:
the soul's eclipse, our fragile benediction.