Watermark

July 12, 02008 -- REVISED

   

It's a dark night,
a slight moon.

The scar remains,
pale silent stitches

from wrist past elbow.
She held herself

together. She healed.
They used a saw

to remove the cast.
It screamed.

She wakes in the breeze
of the ceiling fan,

sinks into deep
mattresses; the sweetness

of strawberries; tart lemon cake;
the full scent of grass, just mowed,

lying down on its own fresh self;
the soft underwater feel of a tree-

shaded room. Even the taste
of mountain fires,

smoke in her mouth.
Even that pleases her.

  

16 July: This poem has been significantly revised, with suggestions and guidance from Cindy and the PoetryEtc poets. It has reminded me what I mean to be doing here. I will write more about this later.

For those interested in the revision process, I'll post a few versions below the cut.

Fire

09 July 02008, Missoula, Montana, USA

Mount Sentinel is on fire,
and the Constitution is burning,
ignited by leftover Independence
Day fireworks and fear-brand patriotism.

One white helicopter dips water
from the Clark Fork, carries it to the line
of orange flame. People stand on the river trail,
commiserating with one another. Our crews are thin,

sent to fight fires in Big Sur;
our Reserves are in Iraq. Red firetrucks
wait at the bottom of the mountain. Deer leap
into the gorge, then walk calmly into town. Smoke

furls down into the saddle, down
into the valley. The line crawls higher,
one line of flame meets another, a long curved
gesture of fire, grass that seemed green and strong

burning, burning. The Fourth
Amendment is smoking, curling into
ash. As the sky darkens and the mountain
grows brighter, we retreat. We stand at the windows

of our wood houses, watching
the flames climb up, climb down
the mountain. We are mere citizens, civilians;
the fire is near, but far enough, and we leave it

to the professionals. Finally,
we go to the private, inviolate embrace
of our own beds, almost secure, almost believing
that our castles are safe, that the fires won't reach us.

July 4th

[This poem's lines are too long for the column, so I've posted it as an image. You will find the text, with broken lines, below the cut.]

Snapshot Poem 02 July 02008

Where I used to live, light
will be embracing this day
all the way around. Here,
where I live now, light
is shorter, night longer,
days waver less noticeably.

Again and again I dream
of moving. Places strange
and familiar; neighbors
oddly unknown. Today
one of the young squirrels
took bread from the feeder

and came to sit at arms-
length in the tree above me.
She turned and turned
the food in her tiny hands,
scattering crumbs, then
stretched out flat and cool

on the wide branch. I don't know
why she joins me here, morning
after morning. I see a pale bread-
crumb traveling across the stones,
and imagine the strong-backed ant,
bearing the weight, carrying the light.

This week's prompt is light.

"Why cut your hair?"

It pulls so heavy, so long
it's a hindrance to sitting.
Up, it brings headaches;
down, a tangle and no one
but me to brush it out.
No one lifts it but me,
no other hands hold it.
Braided, I'm a matron;
knotted, a librarian. Some
other woman or child, bald
from illness and its cures,
will carry it with more
grace, more gratitude.
It will grow back, thinner

and more gray. I found
blood on the garden
stones this morning.
Some songbird, caught
in the talons of a kestrel?
The garden is blooming:
yellow columbine, blue
delphinium, purple allium,
coral bells, a hundred small
white flowers on the wild
geranium. I breathe deep
the fertile air. I try to stand
up straight. I try to hold
my head high. It's heavy.

  

[revising in place...]

June Moon

Rose Moon, open.
Strawberry Moon, fill
our mouths with sweetness.

It is the month of marriage,
weddings under arches,
long dresses and dress coats.

Women marry men, men
marry men, women marry
women, inconstant humans

promising constancy, forgetting
how you fade, how you pass
from fullness to absence; from

promise to amnesia. Bless
these brides, these grooms.
Scatter your light upon them.

  

Checking In

So. What have I been doing, while not writing? I'm in lazy summer mode, even though we've had only a few days that qualify. I've been reading science fiction and mysteries, and watching television (science fiction and mysteries.)

The human imagination is a marvelous and limited thing. I've read two sci-fi novels recently, both written in the last decade; both positing a near future of technological marvels. But neither imagined a present in which airlines no longer serve meals.

This weekend I read Obama's The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. I decided it was time I learn more about him. And I'm impressed. He can think; he can write. I've added his first book to my to-read list.

Speaking of books, if you like ravens, buy this one: The Raven: Soaring Through History, Legend & Lore, by Lynn Hassler from Rio Nuevo Publishers. It's charming, it's informational, it's entertaining -- and there's my Raven poem, tucked into a chapter on Ravens In Literature, along with quotes from some of the greatest writers. I.am.awed.

Another of my poems, Bell, is in this month's issue of Abalone Moon, a Journal of Poetry and the Arts.

Blogger Barbara Doduk featured some of my work on Flickr Focus Friday last week.

I notice with pleasure that Dave Pollard has included me in what he calls "MY GRAVITATIONAL COMMUNITY: People who have inspired or informed me frequently over the past few months." If I am able to inspire or inform Dave, I must be doing something right. Even if I don't know what I'm doing.

Our neighborhood is coming up: Hartman Place, Where green meets green. Actually, the neighborhood has been coming up for awhile, but still is a nice mix of students and grown-ups. This project has been in the works for some time, and I'm looking forward to seeing it go up.

Speaking of going up:

Have I mentioned that I have a cousin who's a rocket scientist? I do have a cousin who's a rocket scientist! He's the Technical Program Manager for General Dynamics, on the NASA-GLAST team:

GLAST is a powerful space observatory that will explore the most extreme environments in the universe, and search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious dark matter, explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and help crack the mysteries of the staggeringly powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.

I wonder what Robb would think of my sci-fi addiction? Does he share it, or might he think it, um, illogical? How can science fiction compare with what Robb is actually doing? With the questions his work seeks to answer?

Patiann Rogers once said (I'm paraphrasing) that it's the poet's job to explain science to readers, where it was once our job to explain religion. I -- an undereducated American -- don't do very well at this, I think. I look at the NASA website, and am overcome by the depth of our ambition, as humans, to understand this universe.

This unmeasurable universe.