I’ve had a few productive mornings during this miserable cold. Maybe I don’t sleep as soundly and the boundaries are thinner between wakefulness and dreaming. Whatever the reason, I wake with words already formed into poetry. Thought I might share a few.
under the fig tree
(and coincidentally exactly how i remember the fig tree in the garden of my childhood…
i’m sure it was never this huge, but to me, it was a whole world.)
she waits in unwarded memory vague notions of girl under youth’s fig tree small and solitary bright and beckoning boundless in the way of childhood her face alight at sight of me ‘let’s climb!’ she squeals glad to have snagged a playmate she leaps into leafy heights then reaches down her hand to help old body to follow i take hers in mine notice scars left by time so young yet so marked the shoulders wary the eyes unsure the skin bruised and puckered i take her slight hand trace wrinkled finger on unlined flesh i know this life-line know more what she will yet endure this bone will fracture this smile will falter this heart will break i want to hold her far from all time’s pain leave her merry under the fig tree but for her eyes and shoulders… because she knows me
soliloquy
should i stay or should i go… that is the question the plague of midnight hours the dark flowers of whispered screams and dreams of endless respite but bright flames ne’er illuminate the tenebrous gate of unbeing and i dread the shedding of this me-ing no map, no hand to hold it fast… still… is this i worth the burden of its being still, here i am or that is the thought but to not to set out on paths untrodden with boots cast off… quite so should i stay to wish well the day that comes only to sleep at its dawning or should i go but not to know the potential of me the fault in these stars redeeming to not that but dissolve in this streaming joining flow and fury and fire and freedom but not me-dom that is the question to be or to undo me that is the question…
the center did not hold
before the end i once asked — who do you see when you look at me your answer bred dismay even as your eyes smiled — the beautiful young girl i married and i thought — what of all the time since is there no mark of my life written in soul or skin but hindsight’s proven this was the inflection revelation of center quite un-held the void that once was us
And these both came from the same metaphor…
house of cards
i do not believe in queens and kings frail princesses foolish knights i do not believe that many should labor for lifetimes so few may preen and pose gorging on the heart of the world turning all to putrid waste i do not believe in nobility some peculiar grace the gift of gods where are the deity-kissed now faces on milk cartons i do not believe they ever were in once upon a times i believe in firm foundations lives lived in fairness and felicity i believe in significance memories and meaning made for all i believe in warm bread and merry children i would not live in these perilous towers of conceit nor spend my days shoring up the base i do not believe in this quaking hierarchy for i have seen one card tear the whole tower down so that all that is melts into air
winter memories
winter is a memory palace frail house of cards stacked against the winds of change bright holy days long dark nights shared intimacies of warmth from food and laughter were you there looking out the rimy window at these snow-shrouded gardens coffee steaming up the glass obscuring time or did you pull a card — brutal knave of hearts killer of kings — and topple this wholesome tower releasing time and memory to forlorn fluttering taters riding the fury of the north wind into oblivion
By My Solitary Hearth 