Fall
red leaves are multiplying on the maple trees
bright berries draw rings round the mountain ash
just one flower survives on the hollyhock
its blaze of glorious blooms lost with the bees
faded away to silence and dried seeds
hummingbirds have departed too and geese
gather in great gaggles on the grass feasting
before they take flight and soar to the south
I want to walk out and talk about their journey
but they waddle away and won’t let me get close
Ste. Luce-sur-Mer
(1995 &1996)
marooned and listless
monarch of all he surveyed
this ancient sea-side crab
caught naked on a wave-wet beach
surrounded by thronging gulls
their powerful beaks
pulling at the carapace
half-buried in the sand
moment of truth
the second the oyster’s
protective vacuum breaks
the crab sucked from the sand
battered the scattered body
spread over crisp sheets
pillowed on mermaid-hair
claws that once clicked
silent now hushed
listen to the tide
watch the wind’s footprints
walking on warm summer sand
St. Patrick
At Tara Manor, a long way from the Emerald Isle,
bold deer emerge at night to nibble the Hosta
Lilies and desecrate lawn and flowerbeds. They
arrive all curious, ears twitching, tails raised,
a wonder for some, a plague for others, culled,
last year, to no effect, with mothers giving birth
this spring to triplets and twins. Dead in a ditch
they resemble the Irish Elk, raised from damp,
peat bogs, or long-dead moose, white rib-cages
air-filled, ghosts galloping down Ghost Road.
He didn’t establish aquaculture. Salmon,
bringers of Celtic wisdom, spirit beings not
to be confused with commercial products,
but repositories of knowledge, swimming
Wikipedias to be consulted like oracles and
relied upon in difficult times. Where now do
we go to trust the truth, CNN, Fox News, CBC,
The Daily Gleaner, The Telegraph-Journal?
Commentary:
Yesterday’s post https://rogermoorepoet.com/2019/08/26/think-about-it/ started a dialog about whom do we trust for information and how and why do we trust them. Today’s poem continues the same theme, but in a different format and with very different words and intent. Traditional wisdom, and the time to think things out carefully, is lost, save among the indigenous. Our times demand speed, hurry, instant decisions, merciless schedules f do, do, do, and little time for think, think, think.
What is this life, if full of care, / we have no time to stand and stare?” The Newport / Cas Newydd (Wales) poet |W. H. Davies expressed this well in his poem Leisure, full version here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_(poem) Stop the world, I want to get off. Many have made the request, few have managed it. Yet all of us feel, at one stage or another, the need to ‘get away from it all’. So, what are you going to do about it? Do you even have five minutes to sit down and think … answers to be written on rice paer, folded neatly, and floated out to sea in a pea green boat manned (if that’s the right word) by an owl and a pussy cat.
Full House
Full house: echoing footsteps, shadows,
everywhere, a litter of toys, crayons,
colored pages, jigsaw puzzles, Barbie
and Ken found at the back of a shelf.
Memories: pinned to the fridge, found
in strange places, an almond on my chair,
a drawing in my notebook, a message,
unintelligible, scrawled on shopping lists.
That peremptory voice calls my name
and I drag myself from sleep, only to know
it was a dream, netted up from slumber’s
dark midnight sea. I drift off again and
see her again, opening the bedroom door,
calling, calling, ever present in voice,
song, and dervish dance, such energy,
round and round, bouncing on my bed,
rolling the exercise ball across the floor,
oblivious to danger, harm, the perils of
unbalancing, stumbling, slipping, falling,
aware of the need for sticking plaster
comforts littering thighs, knees, calves,
feet arms, elbows, where ever instant
attention calls for instant, urgent treatment.
I will always remember the ambushes
that rolled off the tongue, phrases way
beyond the skills of a four-year old. What
if her mother is a lawyer, the youngster
shouldn’t control that sort of language.
She remembered so much from her last
visit. We thought she would have forgotten
us, but no, she remembered where almost
everything was hidden, out of sight but
no longer out of reach. Just a little bit taller,
stronger, more determined, faster, so fast
and loud we could not keep up. This morning
I awoke to the silence of an empty house.
Yellow
Sunshine and daffodils: my grand-daughter
paddles in the kitchen sink. Her mother
washes feet and dishes. “Sit,” Finley says,
and “stand,” following the words with actions.
“Yellow,” she says, “yellow,” as daffodils
fill the computer screen to shine in that
far-off kitchen five hundred miles away
by road, but immediate by I-Pad.
“Yellow,” Finley repeats, “yellow.” Soon
in that distant province where spring arrives
so much earlier than here, she will see
daffodils dancing their warm weather dance,
tossing their heads to gold and yellow trumpets,
fresh, alive, and young in the soft spring breeze.
Commentary: Not a large vocabulary, back then … yellow … yellow hair, yellow jello, yellow dog, yellow cat, yellow daffodils, well, we got that one right anyway. So, she is here now, yet again, with an enlarged vocabulary and two feet taller. She comes shopping with me, swings on the shopping cart, runs everywhere, will not sit still, slips and slides like stones in a slate quarry. She takes my cane, I call it a walking stick, and thwacks it in the air, a danger to sundry and all. Knows what she wants: not this, not that, no, yes, THIS … and points with a sticky finger at whatever it is that has caught her fancy.
She runs away from me, and I cannot catch her. I stand there quietly, waiting for her to return. And she does, with a squeal and a shriek and cries of joy after even a brief absence. We talk magic. I say I am invisible, and she cannot see me. She says she is invisible, but I poke her in the ribs with my index finger and she squeals again. Magic, she says, you can do real magic. I nod. Me too, she says. And she is the real magician for she is four years old and has me bewitched.
Finley at Two
Blood of my blood, my daughter’s daughter,
I live too far away to watch each day the laughter
on your lips, the sparkle of your eyes.
I see them when we Skype. Such a miracle
this magic machine that reduces distance
and time and brings you here to me.
I see you trying to stand, to understand,
to hold my image in your mind, to figure
out these moving shadows on the screen.
Words, born from poetry in my heart
and music on my lips, sometimes fall short,
and fail. Perhaps I should carve you a Welsh
love spoon. But time is not on my side. So brief,
this life: I wonder if we will ever meet again.
Commentary: Seeing Finley again, now aged four, has made me question all my earlier poems about her. I am overwhelmed by her energy, her interests, her concentration. I am bowled over by her flexibility, her strength, her joy in simple things. The above is not a new poem: it is a rewrite of an older poem, one that no longer served its purpose. I reshaped it as a sonnet, not traditional, but a sonnet none the less. I doubt that I will have much time on my own over the next two weeks in which to write. I guess I will pick away at this blog, adding a little something every so often, when the energy runs down and tranquility descends. Bear with me: I’ll be back.
Read My Book
Of course, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. More important, why spend money on purchasing someone else’s words when you don’t have to? So here, for all you poor people, old and young, for penny-counters, penny-pinchers, and ultimate scroungers, here a is a free poetry book.
You don’t have to spend a penny (well, not in that way anyway) and all that poetry is all yours. Just click on the butterfly, decipher the words, and all my genius will be yours in the flick of a butterfly’s wings, be it Monarch, Red Admiral, Swallow-tail, or Indigo Bunting.
Now tell me: what exactly is a butterfly kiss, or a butterfly’s sting? Answers on a postcard and in word-cloud form. And remember: there’s more to poetry than meets the eye.
Wanderer
El Árbol de Tule
So many tales are told about the árbol de Tule, that thousand year old tree standing outside the city of Oaxaca. Hernán Cortés is said to have sat beneath it when he came to Oaxaca in 1525, or thereabouts. And it was old then, and famous in folklore. The tree is also famous for the pictures that nestle in trunk and branches. For small change, the little boys, released early from school, will point their mirrors up, into the tree, and spotlight with reflected sunshine the features that you seek. A thousand years, or more, have produced a thousand images, or more. Even the face of Hernán Cortés himself is said to be captured somewhere along the tree-trunk’s art gallery, if you can only find it.
Like Borges’s eternal library, your own portrait can be found there, somewhere. You must search patiently for it, staring into the tree bark until it takes on your features. Then you can move on, knowing that whatever happens you will be caught forever in the life of one of the world’s wonders: el árbol de Tule. But beware of imitations and avoid the plastic imitations and the photos from cheap camera’s that will trap your soul forever, leaving no trace of you in the real world. Ignore these warnings at your peril, or you too will be locked into your cell phone and sentenced to life imprisonment within those digital walls.
Memory
By the time I remembered your name, I had forgotten your face. Then I couldn’t recall why I wanted to talk to you. I trace dark landmarks on the back of scarred hands: blood maps, unremembered, encounters with door knobs and unseen furniture, dust covered photographs, grey, grim, anonymous, hanging on the walls, not belonging in any family album. At night I cruise among islands, emerald green against sapphire seas. Why didn’t I visit these places when I was able to? Golden sand trickles through night’s fingers and time’s hour glass trickles out as stars sparkle and planets dance in Platonic skies. My memory is gradually fading into the distance, like a sailing ship leaving harbour. Each day, I wave another couple of memories good-bye. Each morning I wake unaware of where I have been the night before. It’s not that I sleep walk, just that things pass me by in the blink of a blurred eye. I still track the sails of drifting ships. I think of them as white moths, caught in overnight traps, chloroformed into oblivion, their bodies sometimes soaked in formaldehyde. Occasionally they come to life in the morning, batter their wings briefly against my fingers, leaving them covered with the finest moth-dust, before fluttering away into dawn’s forgiving light. I give chase with pen and paper, the worst of butterfly nets for wild thoughts waiting to be caught, then tamed. I stare at the mesh of the snow-white page and strive to grasp something just beyond my fingertips, trying to decipher it and deliver its message, but I can’t quite remember what it is.
Here, as promised, is the bottle house 2. This time we visit the chapel, and what a lovely spot it is, as you will see, if you are brave, play the game, and click on the next link to the bottle house 2 The last time I visited, rain was falling, not heavy rain, but a light sprinkle that set the skies free and watered gardens and flowers. I should have some photos of the gardens too. If I have, I will post them. I promise!
rogermoorepoet 