Footpaths
Such a miracle:
the first steps of the cormorant’s flight
taken over water.
That first step heavy,
the second lighter,
and the third scarcely a paint brush
pocking the waves.
The need to take flight
lies deep within me.
“Journeyman,”
the Spanish poet wrote,
“there are no footpaths
across life’s sea,
just a wake to show
the way you came.”
Like a ship at sea
or a seabird over the waves
I leave white water in my wake
to show where I have been.
Sun and Moon
My poetry put to music: a new venture for me. This is Cat Leblanc’s version of Sun and Moon. I’ll add the words later. In the meantime: thank you so much for this Cat. Beautiful voice, beautiful music: a Fredericton, New Brunswick singer who is well worth following.
Old Eight Hoots
Winter has touched us
with this change of clocks
and darkness clutches now,
an hour or so too soon.
Old eight hoots watches:‑
he calls; I cough;
but he will not swoop.
He sits tight‑perched, out of sight;
chills me with his ghostly chorus,
hoo‑hooing me home.
Bright stars crackle the sky.
Frost crisps fallen leaves.
A mist weaves webs scarce‑seen.
And all around,
as cold ground creaks
its wordless tongue‑leafed language,
night‑shapes abound.
In Praise of the WYPOD
(Cheryl, Jude, Judy, Julie, Rachelle)
and
My Other Blogging Friends
How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love you when together we start to write
for although you’re always out of sight,
you’re never out of mind. So many days
we’ve spent sitting at keyboards, tapping
at computer keys. Is this the way to please
each other, a choosing of words, a squeeze
of meaning into a smaller space, overlapping
metaphors and images improved in ways
we never dreamed of on our own? Each
to his or her own, we say. Yet we reach
out to each other over time and space,
not joined at hip or lip, but with energy and zest,
sailing similar seas, and trying our very best.
Rain Stick
The bruja turns her rain stick upside down.
Rain drops patter one by one,
then fall , faster and faster
until her bamboo sky
fills with the welcome
sound of rushing water.
An autumnal whirl of sun-dried cactus
beats against its wooden prison walls.
As I look heavenwards,
clouds gather,
rain falls in a wisdom of pearls,
cast from dark skies.
The scales fall from my eyes
and land on the marimbas,
dry beneath the arches
where wild music sounds,
half-tame rhythms,
sympathetic music
like this rainstorm
released by the bruja’s
magic hand.
(bruja: witch, witch doctor)
Comment: Every afternoon, in the rainy season, as regular as clockwork, the clouds build up and by five o’clock, the rain comes tumbling down. Nothing can describe the welcome smell of cool rain on dry dust and hot sand, the sound of raindrops pittering through the trees to splash on dry leaves, or the hiss of water on hot cobbles.
When the rain doesn’t come, then the Oaxacans who believe in the ancient traditions resort to sympathetic magic. They ask the brujos for help and the witch doctors bring out their rain sticks. Sympathetic magic: the sound of the sun-dried cactus thorns falling through the hollow rain stick imitates the sound of the rain falling on the rain forest leaves. The clouds gather in sympathy and, sooner or later, the skies fill up with clouds, and down comes the rain.
I glanced out of the bedroom window, and there they were. So silent. “Five deer,” I whispered to Clare.
We watched as they moved through the trees at the garden’s foot. Step by step, silent, slow, ears pricked, cautious, the little ones up to their bellies in snow.
They couldn’t see me as I took these pictures, but I am sure their sharp hearing caught the click of the camera. The one on the left is looking right at the spot where I am sitting.
Sound and movement surround them: the clicking of branches, the whispering wind. They are so careful, so cautious, so suspicious. We look: but we can’t see anyone out there. Certainly we cannot hear the neighbors’ dogs.
There must be something, there. They start to turn. Will they go back the way they have come?
No: they continue to the road and we catch a last glimpse of them through thin branches as they prepare to cross the tarmac and vanish into the deeper woods beyond.
Butterfly
A butterfly
brushes against
my mother’s rose bush.
Pale and delicate,
much too frail to survive,
in this April wind,
he tears his wing
on a thorn.
The white of its shredding:
a sudden shriek,
blanched blood
drifting like snow.
“Why did you write those words?”
My mother’s voice
sounds in my head.
“Am I the butterfly?
Are you the echo of my cry?”
From this distance in time,
my mind bounces back and forth,
from image to image:
a stone skipped across
tranquil water.
Pictures pound through my head:
waves on the shoreline
where I scattered her ashes,
and every grain of sand
a grinding of small bones.
At Giverny
At Giverny, Monet found the peace
he had sought at Argenteuil, but never
found. In this photo, he walks between
irises and nasturtiums on the gravel
path leading to the Japanese footbridge
that spans the lily pond. He stands now
on that bridge and sees himself reflected
… eyes, mouth, whiskers, hat …
all floating, half-drowned forever
in the fragrant colors he turned into
plants and flowers. Illusive, yet real,
the ghost of his smile haunts the lily
pond’s depths in this two dimensional
recreation of light and movement, held
forever in the camera’s instantaneous
capture of this selected moment. Now,
in the first home we have owned, this
Christmas Eve, with snow on the ground,
and a chill wind blowing a Queen Anne’s
lace of drifting flakes against the window’s
fly screen, anniversary flowers brighten
our table, while under the tree, presents
… including this book you gave me …
are piled as everything waits, breathless,
as past and future, hand in hand, dance
slow motion paintings to the flickering
rhythms of the fire’s impressionist flames.
Those Almost Perfect Hands
In my dream, my father’s rough brown hands deal me six cards: 2 3 7 7 8 8. I cast away the 2 & 3. My father cuts a six. After the pegging, my father watches as I score: 15/2, 15/4, 15/6, 15/8, and 2 are 10, and 2 are 12 …
I turn on the mini-flash light that I clip each night to my Teddy Bear’s ear and I check my watch. Three o’clock in the morning: half way through another difficult night. Do I really I need to get up and pee? I rub my eyes with the backs of my hands. Surely the walk to the bathroom, the cool night air, the movement will be better than lying here, dozing and dreaming. I take the flashlight from Teddy and pin it on to my nightie. Supporting my bad leg with one hand and hanging on to the bottom sheet with the other, I haul myself to a sitting position, legs over the bed. Then I reach for my walking sticks and stump towards the bathroom.
Still half-asleep and wandering in dreamland, I push my left foot forward only to stub the little toe against the cane. A sudden shock of pain wakes me and I stumble forward and jam the middle toe of my right leg against the other stick. This is my bad leg, the one gripped by sciatica, and I swear out loud as a knife blade splits my flesh and sends electric shocks down my leg, through my buttock, and into my spine. Fifteen days now: when will it ever end, this attempting to sleep on my own, these nights of restlessness.
My neighbor has left his garage lights on and they cast wind-blown shadows of dancing trees and waving limbs across the bedroom walls. Hands reach out to grasp me then fade away as more shadows dance and shift. The shadows on the wall remind me of Plato’s Cave: a wonderland of myth and adventure and what if any of it were true? Falsehoods flash their alternative realities and reality and dream clash in my half-awake mind. Crazy patterns continue to trace their waves across the walls. They form and march their silent jack boots, turning them into ballroom pumps that caress unwitting partners in an eternal yin and yang of light and shade.
I look out of the window. Three deer stand in the yard beneath me. They wander through our garden each night, journeying alternately from west to east and from east to west. I think of them as a family of Hobbits, traveling there and back again. Tonight they are headed west, in search of something, somewhere, but I know not what or where. They gather round our bird feeder and the wind chimes clatter as their long black tongues lick out to feed on bird seed. My flashlight beams into the baby deer’s eyes. She snorts a warning to the others and jumps ten feet backwards, turning in mid-air, to land facing away from the house. The other two deer follow the baby and leave reluctant steps across the snow. So beautiful: I wish I hadn’t frightened them. I wish they didn’t have to go.
In the bathroom, I reach for the analgesic balm to ease my pain. My mind is numb with all those drugs I have been taking. The alcohol hasn’t helped. It makes me clumsy and I stand thick-tongued, dull-witted. The pain in my hip is gnawing away at my mind. I know I won’t go back to sleep. My fingers fumble across the counter and I unscrew the top of the first tube I encounter. I rub toothpaste into my back and leg and now I smell of spearmint.
I wander back to bed, sit on the edge, and raise my perfectly scented dead leg with a helping hand. I pin my flashlight back on Teddy’s ear. He’s a good Teddy and doesn’t make a sound. Unlike me: I wince and moan and groan. Mars, the red planet, stalls for a moment and is framed as a circular dot at the center of my tic-tac-toe window panes. I watch as an overnight flight seeks the sun and looks for the right spot in which to place its flickering cross of sparking flame. I enter a hollow dream of scarecrows reaching with twig fingers to thumb a carrot nose at leaping deer. The old raccoon gnaws at the moon and soon it is a pared rind floating its narrow lemon boat across the sky. I snuggle in beneath the blankets that Teddy has kept warm and I enter a wonderland of half-awake dreams. My childhood lies down in a primrose hedgerow and falls asleep to the tinkling of blue bells and the wafting, newly minted scent of lily of the valley.
… and 12 are 24. My father checks my hand and grimaces. I take the cards and shuffle them. My father cuts. His hands are as white as fresh-brushed teeth glowing in the moonlight. My hands and the deck bear the rich scent of spearmint.
rogermoorepoet 