February, week three

Day 15   

Just Out of Reach

I’d prefer a day at the beach,
the beach where I found 
my power as a girl, power
to make boys sweat. I’d take
one more day in my blue two-piece
with the white dots, being slathered
with baby oil, listening to
Deep Purple on my transistor radio.

I’d  swim beyond the breakers,
come in licked with salt and sun.
I’d pick one day to have over, a day
when everything was sea and sky
and no one knew yet how hard
we’d miss it later. In winter, dreams
are always the same: beach day
with everything still ahead of me.



Day 16  

Snow

From hidden gardens of the fertile sky, fall 

        showy ice-spun blossoms made of 

  air

It’s God’s design that we on earth 
                             might sigh      

                 
as we watch them sifting silently here.          

Each pristine flower cut, is folded, sent              

flying stringless, pure. Latticed crystal kites 

                                                  drift soft across the star-blank 
                                                                        firmament.              

From deep within the muted spiraled light, saints and angels 

  try to shake the news,

the frightful rumors they’ve been 

       told:  of death that overtook a child of two

               who wandered out into the dazzling cold,
blinded, lost and then beguiled  
  by winter’s flowery, frozen smile.

NOTE:   I chose to explode the form here, with the rhyme intact, but not the lines




Day 17    

Nightscape

In the crow-blue evening, in the dove-grey dawn,
where every shadow lives, a dream breaks
its shell and spills its yolk upon me.
Then comes the peacock — strutting, fanning me
like a queen. His eyes see into my past, brush
my sins away in colors of penitence. Green
as the sea at its curl, gold as the touch of faith,
purple as a wound at its heart. He glides the room
while I sleep unaware of his magic. He hisses
at the spiders building webs of guilt on the ceiling.
Like all things born without wings, I mourn
for lack of sky. Like one ever bound to earth,
I roll to my left side, feel sunlight ease through
the window. I sense the brush of feathers
on my face, breathe in and out, out and in,
rising from what feels like death, like birth.

This poem comes from a dream. I awakened to find a perfect replica of this peacock on Facebook, in a painting by Brandi Dayton. I had to write about the peacock of my dream.




Day 18           

Plow Guy

He ought to trundle
slowly down the streets
take care
of mailboxes and car bumpers
see his way
through the dark, lit up
by his powerful beams.
Plow or sand
to let us out of winter’s cage,
but he is all NASCAR
and alpha
so barrels instead
and backs up after each pass
as if being chased
by some snow spirit, ghost
out to eat
him and all his children.
Fast, furious plowing, loud
in the night,
crunch and squeal of metal
as the mailbox flies off its post
and dashes hopes
of tomorrow’s letters, cards.
He ought to stop
and right the thing, prop
it against the porch. He is possessed
by cold or what’s in
the flask he tucks between his thighs
in the cab of the city plow.
Rum? Vodka? Gin?
No matter, warmth inside
the thing, or pure boredom tonight.
Plow guy, race home
to your wife or girlfriend
for warmth that doesn’t knock
down anything.




Day 19

Upon the Heads

of stylish women tradition rests 
its hand; admiring glances 
rain the calendar’s columns
as centuries meander 
lanes, boulevards.
How proper their speech too,
French or Italian phrases flourish
at table, in drawing rooms,
while their men have repaired 
to a cigar, brandy from Europe.
Upon the heads of stylish women
not crowns, but veils
of unknowing 
that will someday be lifted.





Day 20   

Revised by Light

Light through the glass bottles
on my windowsill, winter light 
not as lively as May or July.
Patches of it lie about the floor.
Time knocks back and forth. 
It’s not early or late. I am roused
from every scattery thought of my own 
making, bent over the poem 
lying undone, in pieces on my desk.
What of the light, its power to revise?

Light has gone, escaped the sill
and flown through the bare arms
of tress sighing for just another hour.
On my desk, the gathered bones
of the poem that fell today and broke
like a glass bottle. It stirs in the shadows, 
rises like the odor of old paper, ink,
Time still thumps back and forth,
but quieter now that light has gone.





Day 21   

The Colors of Nitrous
for Dr. Barbour

He breaks open her molar, drills
and fills and polishes. Hazed over
by nitrous, his patient begins
a journey into her own eyeball. 
Colors whirl the vitreous humor
as if in reply to pressure or sound.
With a pump of purple, bronze, green,
the girl travels deeper, recognizes 
the back side of her iris, surprised
by its fanned folds, its amber flex
to the music on every pulse of the drill. 
She tries to change the color, applies
Carribean Blue to no avail. Amber
is strong, embeds in its heart fossils 
of ancient bees, drops of water. Drill
through, find treasure. Molar broken open 
to be healed like amber while colors 
of ancient pigments wash over her.