Poems from The Devil's Fools
Lit With Radiance
Joy oscillates to sorrow as a dolphin
breathes one element to move in another,
as a butterfly eats the plant’s green solids
when it crawls, the nectar when it’s winged.
Sorrow fathoms glory as a tree’s roots
curl irregular in shape and thickness,
unsteadying the outline of its trunk.
Glory rouses joy the way a mystery
comes close to shadow, or a shoulder
leads the knee from ground to space
where curvature saddles the known universe.
Joy announces sorrow in the wish to live
in many countries, turn all corners,
marvel at the streets, and wash them.
Sorrow ambers glory inside shabby rental houses,
motes of sunlight, pollen, shoes well broken in.
Dog Day Harvestfly
Clamped upon ribbed ridges
where shell cracked a central seam
the full-grown harvestfly emerges aqua
lighter blue than anywhere in nature,
two three-inch wings
spread not yet for flying
drying.
To the brown shell of a nymph
that grubbed on root juices three years
—whose empty feet
will grip the cohosh leaf
until the next great wind—
clings the origin of faerie.
To a dull mound with emptied legs.
When peach juices and blackberry
run down the chin and a dozen
ears of corn tassel market sacks
we see them parked on flagstones
or outgreening the grass,
black back and eyes, clear wings
with emerald hems, and the red shoes
of creatures who have longed
to dance, whose feet will never cross
church threshold, whose bread of life
is air. In an hour the spread wings
will shutter the great body,
vibrant vulnerable blue
hardening before the rain.
Fresh Coffee After You Are Gone
There’s studied madness in opening bills after breakfast,
signing bank transfers. I clear my mind enough to know
a fallen stick of incense won’t burn the house,
to figure out the cassette’s lack of sound, the rasp
of its rotation, is my error not the answering machine’s;
side A not B is the voice, still there, metallic
in the renovated room without its furniture:
I’ll be he-e-re—the abecedarian of 4 am—
I know: Dinner time’s the best time. Talk to
you later—the manic laugh, disintegration after
successful surgery inside the frontal lobe.
Pick up. Pick it up! I am healed. Oligodendro-
glioma spreads its treeroots in the brain. If I
could have work to do, take aspirin and move on
instead of staring at the sad museum pieces
that pondering sculpts from love, as though understanding
were a place to live. If I could simply talk about
the damp closet upstairs, the milky trail of mildew
on black velvet, the yellowed dry cleaning tags.
Is the number on the scrap of paper 6 or 9?
As though knowing would be alchemy? Square one:
hot bitter brew, then the nothing that has to be done.
For an agitated hour I bundle one towel about
another in a ball, sort the light fabrics from dark.
Proserpine
I fell in with a man from a small country.
He stopped on a rainy lane and asked did I want a ride.
My mother’d told me always to follow my feet
but the fumes that day overpowered my nose.
He bit me hard then nubbed at my love pearl.
Red seeds fell from the wound. He says I ate them.
He offered me board if I paid for room
among bloodless artistes and ivory heroes
by charging his battery—one or two shocks.
Time passed and faded. There’s a beauty in that.
He took up his helmet. I saw he was sightless.
I said let’s let it rip. Soot fell about us.
Once I'd signed his note that hell could not be
improved on, he set me loose for the summer.
He'd have slipped me into his wallet if I'd fit.
Poems from Ember Days
Offering the Body: The Tibetan Practice of Chöd
The eagle does its day job
feasting on what’s left by crow and vulture.
Anything I’d planned to do is over.
As my head nods its usual consent
to imaginary promises and dreams
my corpse appears before me.
Time’s come to set my mind
to ribbon flesh, chop small, pile it in a dish
made from the cranial bones.
I scout the stinking ground for anything
to start the fire, use my own desire.
The skull cup, on its tripod, enlarges as it heats.
Half-moon on a finger
pokes from the pile of blood and bones
simmering to stew, to nectar.
All who are wise, the ordinary, furred,
obstructors, germs of sickness—
may their bodies, minds, be sated.
From every distance and dimension, beings
afraid, unsatisfied, or blessed, feast to satisfaction—
devils, angels, animals, everyone I owe.
I see no stopping to the world
but there is respite from the demons
that arise daily in the head.
That this ritual could do the same thing twice
—my awareness cuts that thought. O, I cherished
this poor body. I quake. Invite.
Now, knife the ritual words in vast space
reduced to dust mounded like clouds
clinging dearly held to let in silence.
For all that is perceived, flesh or consciousness,
appears then disappears, image in a mirror—
red drop, a fingernail, a ball of hair.
Earthly Mishaps
Faint, humming, inexorable in the damp
below the ruined walled castle garden
Mare’s Tail tunnels an eight-foot root.
Sly-boots, I’ve spaded the circle, reached to my elbow.
Still the plant breaks. As Eve brought a man
his labor, it will multiply tenfold.
I shop for survival: a sprayer to level pride, melancholy
and unwanted shoots. The canister is lowered from
its shelf, bagged in plastic. The till rings.
Keys in hand, I see the carpark as a horsetracked swale
where Cadfael leads his roan, saddlebagged
with an apothecary box. Medieval herbicide?
As he stumps through mud, the monk’s brass scale tips:
one pan sways with the bitterness of interrupted life,
the other, Eve’s radical helplessness.
Ember Days
The almanac’s laconic whistle
passes a millennium at last grown
nonfungible. Day breaks up the where-were-
you party. Feet wander concrete platforms
lit with radiance weak and discomfited
from two bare bulbs, stilled double-naughts.
Mobiles dry-rattle beneath posters for stewpots
and holiday sales, the forecast troubled music:
history, or at least cold wind of a startling event.
A cricket’s chirrup slows to intermittent pipe.
Hooves break the dried railside bramble. Auburn
summer coats thickened gray, the fawns cluck.
Floats To The Sky
Initially I did not plan
a painting of a ladder
faithful to phantom
noises before sleep
wearing a clean chemise
beneath dirty shorts
under a worn abaya
in my pink slippers
with my red cheeks in the shop
for spots of vitiligo
and smoothing of their
plump ragged history.
The canvas came bare
as a bell before it’s struck
by brisk forced air
on open waters
or the blue wasp
that loved me
when I was a child
with a sting to the pineal
scattering bars through light
all the way to dark
faster than brush
leaks down my hand.
Kitchen Theater
Make history pleasant; give it a changing
and half-slumped position. Make war
squat and cushion-like. Make a birthday
cake of the emperor’s furniture—if a stick
persists, make warm brown tea. Aethelwold
is drunk again, Cnut buzzing like a fly.
Morning is a busy time. We must forget
variations on the quake and sweat
in a walk on the long stairway of necessity.
A great crisis occurred, guilty verdicts,
no rescue for the dead. Devoid of human
population, seas abound in fish. No such
seas are left. Put the project aside. No one
will miss you until lunch. History disappeared
in a yellow boat behind the island.
reprinted in Strange Histories by artist Ian Trask, slide collages with writings by friends. You can order this book directly from Ian’s website.
The multimedia Strange Histories (2018) contains 3 of my poems.
One of the rotations in my website’s header image is
the ‘Kitchen Theater’ page from this fine art book.
For When Nothing Is Remembered
On the eighth day we looked on and realized
it wasn’t good anymore. Where did they go,
the shared rituals? We buy greeting cards
that could be sent to anyone, nineteenth
century fixtures shine without a lamplighter
and the city spent millions wiring
the whatnot.
Coffee in a paper cup, a painted wood duck,
little darlings on the back stairs fed
morning and night–no one born yesterday
will ever see contraptions that we use to
communicate. What of the game under
the tree root left behind the hill?
Step up.
And leave the affirmations by the wayside.
Inveigling all the separate types who
might begin to dance is no path of light.
Your hygienist can look for other work.
You might as well slink off to your room
without lipstick or a gold dress, seeds
in your hair.
Poems from Red Tide At Sandy Bend
From Pillar To Post
Stars of autumn daylight coracle the reservoir—
Birds not milling yet to migrate
overhead—
blue—
The soul begins shrugging off cramped quarters
Water-rooted sycamore
deep in the gorge
blaze white
The path leads through hemlocks up the last trail
Treated lumber
props the kitchen deck's
unhurried decay
Before the leaves turn gold air fuses dust and sun
Ever since I stopped
believing I could save it
I have wanted to
Between Seacurl and Tideline
Pale blue threads of life pulse beneath your fontanelle
—the bay's branching floor a wash of sand aligned with light.
Perfect mother's lips would keep the soft spot fixed.
But I a sister grow along with you
between seacurl and tideline
always six years six months older.
Then the sidewinder—lustral light, sure smoke, white
ash—floats your particles
on waves forever at my knees, the breaking points.
Poems from Within The Shop Of The Divine
Beguile-Flatter Sapient-Wise
—spitting backward the scallop moves forward—
a barnacle anchors the back of its neck
loses most of its head spends life kicking
food into its mouth—
She drifts off mid-page.
The horizon is mute carbon paper,
what’s left of the night.
Has she stolen the shore?
The sack on her shoulder
holds place-cards from presidents’ luncheons,
bills for books and activities
with their blank checks, their smiles, her bows,
the way she can please them.
How many words a day?
porous as pumice her memory grows
neophyte —- novice pariah —- outcast
—yet tomorrow brings more of that rhythmic beating—
Guest In The Neighborhood
I was on chicken surveillance that night:
fowl to be roasted whole or split and fried,
delivered to the busy suburb.
My mind ran to last week’s manifest destiny
wanting to return to the meadow
thrust into the newly green, sun humming
off the pond. Working the line—a private
lake—would have to fill in that longing.
Then the night shift rooted its wishbone in my chest.
I passed the guard, crawled the sidewalk. But
a frenzy of messy barks—the beagle next door—
had me turn. Each tray of hens was carried from
the walk-in cooler, each carcass bathed,
patted dry, set on the appropriate counter
with a little clearing around it.
That odd feeling of walking in place
closed my throat, the inexorable remains
of feeding on wages, hungry for wings.
Uncollected Poems
With The Multitudes
“…The ghosts are chained to joy…”
Listen! my 8-line poem “With the Multitudes” at the launch of The Healing Muse 23, Upstate Medical’s annual journal of poetry and photography.
Structural Uncertainty
You wrote the promissory note a year ago
That he would not be improved on.
Perhaps the day could magically be re-opened
To a place where it would not collapse entirely.
Perhaps your heart could be treated with robustness
And lemon drops before you fall asleep.
Not that you want an extension.
It’s time for his flash of light in the night.
Vallum 17, 1
Expect the Ants
Household Buddhist
Whatever we erect is simplified.
Storms rend structure from mooring,
render sand from shell.
Sit in a chair. Or on a stack of cushions.
Prune the rambler awhile. Or let it
leaf—eyes level with the railing, or a cloud
of heavy water. In the early days
(days when I was my own ancestor)
my husband and I would set the alarm.
5:30 sharp we’d drive into town, set
crossed legs on tatami. The work day
went by, dinner. Evening zazen with friends.
A silence surrounded with silence.
Occasional cars muttered by.
The call of a bird before sleep.
Round after round, day after day
another strand weaves in that nest:
rain-weathered grey now, airy with wind-toss.
Slant: A Journal of Poetry 39.2
did your mother ask. . .
did your mother ask who do you think you are?
a foot tapping new ice, brocade splayed white on rivulet
the odd wrench in the socket set
one of the self-sowers, flower probably blue
a soapy fluid rounding off an opalescent sphere
so many apples, sauced
the dash for clarity
fairy duster? filaree?
gentle vertigo, a door along the floor
a frail clang, the steep pilgrimage
a page torn unevenly
Notre Dame Review 47
Author COMMENTARY on ‘did your mother ask who do you think you are?’
I was made into such a good girl that I had no answer for the question at the time.
My poems age 6 to 10 rhymed and metered the small joys of family life as the household accumulated tinder that would later crash and burn around us. I am of the Roman Catholic generation brought up on hellfire punishment for sins we were unaware of and a cardboard box on the teacher’s desk with a slot for our pennies for the missions.
In my thirties as a member of a group doing transactional analysis, I learned that phrases my parents commonly shouted at their children in frustration or anger were injunctions that disrupted the natural flow and connection between thought, feeling, action.
My reticent father would blurt You’re defiant! in a tone mixed of shaming and admiration. His accusation placed me in a position just this side of sinning, a precarious culpability from which no argument was possible. He might well have been mouthing his own father, and a lineage of early onset mental illness and alcoholism.
My mother, with children all day in a household that grew with the regularity of Irish twins, was more inventive and more caustic. During the transactional therapy I kept a notebook that started with the disclaimer, in case I died first, that the contents would not apply to her present person or her beliefs, which in her fifties transformed in more positive ways than any other person I have ever known.
But in my childhood and adolescence, she leveled an array of pithy phrases at her children, sometimes while swinging the belt. (What did I answer to the poem’s eponymous question? Was I mute? did I scream back ‘I am myself!’? did I dare sarcasm—‘oh haven’t you heard? I’m Mary Gilliland’—which would have or did make everything worse at that moment: None of your back talk!
One consequence of my parents’ childrearing methods is a frequent delay in my response, whatever the circumstance; it can take me ‘forever’ to think of what to say.
These reflections arise long after the fact of the poem. What was in my mind when I wrote it, despite the sorry circumstances of her utterance, was the gift that my mother’s question had become once I felt free to answer truthfully, to know my own mind.
When her spirits were less stressed, my mother’s sayings were often cribbed from her German father, such as my being Slower than molasses uphill in winter! I am. Taking one’s time can reveal much more than the sum of the parts.
I have always loved riddles, particularly those from the Anglo-Saxon. I’ve had years of Zen training with modern koans, of Vajrayana visualization and dissolution. I can sift the items in this list poem into 2 categories:
—what have I always loved? just-frozen ice on a stream or a pool; flowering plants; apples, our archetypal fruit; pilgrimage; paper;
—what have I coped with enough to learn to make my own? tools; deadlines; concussions and falling.
Those 2 questions, more than the specific answers, are who I think I am.
—Notre Dame Review posts extras with publication.
I wrote this for NDR #47.