Oddments

In search of story


20 Comments

October 14.22: Coping, but barely

It wrapped me like a cloak, that papery sound. October’s leaves, battered and bruised, but holding yet, whooshed thickly in a wind tantrum determined to strip away every remnant of summer, thrashing the trees and twisting each leaf, growling down from the dishwater sky and around our little homes, impatient for winter.

The air was warm still, but one muscular shove from the south bore an invisible stream of ice, a whisper in the tumult, frost-winged specter. I felt it and knew then it was saying what it came to say, this insistent rush.

I bent over the lavender, itself bent low. Spent, sleepy, it offered up a final incense as I trimmed back its floppy stems. Two fat bees lumbered through the air to watch and sniff. They too heard the Babel of the papery leaves, in tongues of crimson and copper, and saluted the deep purple of my harvest. They too knew the time.


7 Comments

November 18.21: Coping

I’m lonely;

I’ll make me a world,

God said.

Now comes the echo,

in winter wind

— loneliest sound —

that lifts dead leaves

like empty chalices,

a last offering

before ice that freezes

even loneliness,

and the moldering carpet

woven by the wind

becomes blanket

for wiggly unseens.

And yet

I’m lonely

lingers:

each of us,

after all,

only one.

 

With thanks to James Weldon Johnson for his poem “The Creation,”

and to the anonymous student

in a high school speech meet many years ago

who put it in my head.

 


6 Comments

March 29.20: Coping

Last night the lightning

tore up the sky;

now remnants gather

and wind sweeps them by,

face-planting the jonquils

into the mud,

ripping the petals

from yesterday’s bud.

No cheer to be had

from this morning’s dawn;

I don’t think I’ll keep calm

but I will carry on.

 

Saluting the British slogan which has served so well —

until we don’t WANT to keep calm.


2 Comments

Connections: May 11.18

Some ancient mythic language

ebbing, swelling, weightless

like liquid air

many-voiced

chorus of Sophocles

bade me stop.

I turned toward the sound

the fullness of new leaves

spring petals

soft as babies

supple in newness

stroked by wind

sibilant and sure

wanting me to know

something.

Still as the dead

I listened

taut

to pluck a word

but there was none.

 

Connections