July Poetry, Week 1

Day 1

Let’s talk a minute

If I could speak to you again,

this is how I’d begin:

I’d declare my independence

not so fiercely

as before, unleash myself

more gently from you

and not completely. A thin line

I’d hold, made of every word

you wanted me to have,

couldn’t get me to hear then.

I’d tether myself, loose

and easy, to your shirt pocket,

the one over your heart.

I’d pay attention

to your eyes this time, watch

for the small lift of the corners

that say I’m just trying to teach you.

I’d avoid being willful, 

wait until you finish your thought,

consider your experience.

No more making a face

when you say no, and trust me, 

little girl, it’s for your own good.

I might even ask for advice

now that I have the grown-up life

you warned me about,

that I felt certain I could handle

without your interference.

Just like when I was two, face

in hands, elbows on the table,

I’d say again let’s talk a minute.

You’d be king of my world

again; I’d be the only thing you loved.

— for my father

Day 2 

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December’s bareness every where!

— from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #97

Longing (variation on a glosa)

What old December’s bareness everywhere

that opens me to love’s abandoned prayers,

for all the drawings on the frosted glass

are code for what could not be made to last.

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen.

You stole away my heart, then killed its dream

and made me live forever without hope

as ghosts of kisses prickle on my throat.

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year

has faded me from happiness to drear,

will n’er be more than ashes on the grate

that flutter there as I in vain hope wait

for one who will not utter words of love.

I fade to dawn, hear croonings of the doves.

In sadness on the icy wire they keen:

How like a winter hath my absence been.

Day 3

Strayed

Five bars from a song

wakes me this morning, a melody

that played every day in the 60s,

that reminds me of a night

at the dunes in Perkins Cove. You

with your arms out asking me

to dance; me singing 

over chords the tide played.

It’s a stray thought, a lyrical 

wander through time that wakes me.

Where was I all night that this

should be where I am at dawn,

feeling the spray on my face, 

strayed from time into once upon a time?

Day 4

Ars Poetica # 34

She is the one

who gave birth to his sonnets, 

to the poems of night

he jerked out

like comets from the Milky Way,

bone-naked, bare 

of adverbs, conjunctions

used spare, joining the legs

of stanzas or the beats 

between ventricles. 

She spoke French, easy tongue

and quick fingers, her accent 

purely ballade, gestures stroking 

his lines into melody. So it is: careful 

love and poetry, shame 

and hesitation, points of light 

and the blood of stars 

drenching the page, the final couplet.

Why is the sky so sorrowed overhead?

The white rose dies easily as the red.

Day 5

Held

The sky holds centuries of clouds

in its bowl, like plums ready to burst

for their ripening. There is rain

like sorrow, ready to wash in 

when life seems too cheerful to remain.

The sea holds time too, hidden

in its caverns miles down, guarded

by blind fish and monsters so terrible

they would die of fright if enough light 

cast their shadows on the water.

In every tree there is a lineage

of the Only People, stepping out in twos

or whole families. Some say the sap 

holds the blood of thousands, sweet food 

for those born at every joined branch.

The sky holds centuries

of memories, some fallen down as rain.

Day 6

Monhegan #14

after James Fitzgerald

By night, fisherman snug

their dories, bump together in threes,

light torches to fool the fish

into thinking the sun is out. 

Curiosity deadly, they leap

onto the nets. Over pipe smoke

and lit cigars seiners ply their trade, 

easier than hauling trap in waters

far from home, gentler lapping

in the gut between Monhegan

and Manana, still water fired 

orange, red, & yellow

where tomorrow the mail boat

from Port Clyde will carry away

the catch, traded 

for real dollars and beer.

It’s a life to die for, a place

of fire and water and Saturdays

at the Grange with island women.

Day 7

Dorothy Behind the Curtain of Music

Earbuds pressed in tight, foot tapping 

to an invisible beat, she makes poems 

from shadows in the café. Watching 

moments from lives she doesn’t live yet, 

she finds lines, weaves webs

of story with dreary men drooling in caffeine 

and low intentions, women dressed too young

for real commitment. Her address changes 

with the weather, a kaleidoscope of clouds 

flashes overhead. Behind the curtain

of music no one else hears, she is voyeur

and designer. She dreams in French, 

wakes in lands of wizards singing odes. 

Momentarily out of action, she writes 

on the sidewalk with chalk, taps 

the heels of her ruby slippers, 

hoping to find the secret way home.