Dear Pablo,
Because you dared to love Matilde
without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I, too, became the unblooming reed
that carries inside it the radiance of summer days,
the luminosity of moon, the glittering secrets of stars.
I, too, believed I could be worthy of devotion
despite my darkness, because my darkness,
because my shadows, because my shame.
I embraced love as wood instead of crystal—
something growing, something vital,
something solid and difficult to break.
Because you spilled love into ink,
I learned your love by heart.
Your words caressed me and drenched me
like late summer rain, they carried me
through gloomy rooms and moonless years.
Because you dared to deeply love one woman,
you touched the soul of this other woman,
and I, too, know, because of you,
the perfume of dark carnation, the ripe apple
of happiness, the bliss of being spread out
on a blanket of ancient night,
a kiss that transcends borders and centuries,
the gift of a love so obscure it resists translation,
the gift of a love so personal
it invites the rest of the world.
*with references to Love Sonnets XII and XVII
Posts Tagged ‘ars poetica’
The Letter I Never Wrote to Pablo Neruda
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, epistle, gratefulness, love, Pablo Neruda, universal on October 26, 2022| 6 Comments »
One Unexpected
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, joy, trust, unexpected, wings on October 25, 2022| 3 Comments »
at the edge of understanding
growing wings—
now, the leap a joy
Dear Gregory Orr,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, gratefulness, grief, loss, poetry on August 22, 2022| 8 Comments »
Like a pale blue ribbon,
soft and lovely,
your words are woven
through the nest that has held me
since the merciless shot of loss.
Your poems meet me again and again
with their open eyes
and their open hands.
They say, Rest here,
sweetheart. I understand.
You, with your pilgrim heart,
your insistence on devotion,
you have cradled me
with your honesty.
Long before I knew
I needed to be saved,
your words found me,
stitched through me with love
as if that is what words are for.
*
Dear friends, here is where you can find out more about the remarkable Gregory Orr.
And here is where you can find one of his poems that has saved me in the past year.
Rosemerry Imagines Her Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, death, obituary, writing on March 31, 2022| 10 Comments »
I want it to be said
I was the kind of woman
who would weep in the concert hall,
undone by the beauty of song.
I want to be remembered
as a creature who loved
spring grass in her bare toes
and dirt in her hands
and the sun on her skin,
and I want everyone I love
to know for a fact
I chose them as my family.
I hope they will say
I loved the blank page
more than any word on it,
though I thrilled for words, too—
It was weird, they might say,
how she would sit there for hours,
days, years, wondering
about the next true thing,
letting the blank rub off on her.
She was so happy, eyes closed,
fingers hovering above the keyboard,
leaning into that moment
when anything is possible,
that edge where she learned
she had wings.
The Poet Reads for the First Time Since Her Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, cinema, performance, self discovery, tree on January 25, 2022| 16 Comments »
with a line from Charles Simic, “The Prodigal”
Glade of light on the empty stage.
She steps into it, eyes blinded.
Someone in the audience
clears a throat. Someone
scuffs a sole. Many invisible
someones make no sound at all.
She has faith they are there.
She is holding a stack of papers.
Her chest contracts, rises.
So much that happens goes unseen,
a secret cinema.
She opens her mouth
and the words fall out like leaves
releasing themselves from a tree.
With each sentence she is more bare
until only her trunk remains.
She is an aspen arriving in January,
skeleton exposed.
What no one can see
are the roots. What no one can see
is she is standing on trust.
It has taken her fifty-two years
of bursting into color and
wildly waving her branches
to finally learn how
to stand still.
The other trees stand with her,
and though it is winter,
their roots grow wider, deeper.
Immersed in van Gogh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, gold, sunflowers, Van Gogh on July 5, 2021| 1 Comment »
at the Immersive van Gogh exhibit in Chicago
Dark, and then suddenly
gold, gold in a major chord,
gold as if living inside Sunflowers,
gold in the ear drums, gold pulsing in pores,
gold thrumming in breath.
golden thoughts of only large sunflowers
van Gogh painted in anticipation.
Gold is perhaps the color of hope,
and so, bombarded with gold
on the walls, gold on the floor,
gold on my skin,
is it any wonder golden tears
fall like petals down the cheeks?
Perhaps, you, too, have prepared
for something beautiful
that hasn’t come to pass.
Perhaps, you, too, have lived
in that golden world
long enough to know it is real,
to know the beauty of bloom
so vibrant and full, know, too,
the beauty of withering.
Perhaps you, too, have known
love so golden the longer
you live it, the richer it becomes,
so rich you must create new colors
to know it, must give it away
to know at last how rich it is.
Perhaps you, too,
know the sunflower inside.
The Price of Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, Art, nothing, space on June 7, 2021| 6 Comments »
for “the lucky buyer” who “went home with a certificate of authenticity” for an “immaterial sculpture” by Salvatore Garau
What could be more valuable
than nothing? The nothing that
frames “The Thinker,” the nothing
that holds every bowl,
every vase, every bust, every thought.
Let others buy the clay, the steel,
the papier-mâché. I will be satisfied
with nothing more than nothing.
Nothing pleases me. Nothing
enchants me. Nothing,
as Heisenberg says,
has a weight. Just think
of the space here beside me
where you are not.
If someone asks me why
I have a five-by-five-foot
empty space taped off in my home
with a plaque that says I Am,
it is because I am so in love
with nothing. Imagine it—
nothing, the color of happiness,
nothing, the size of love,
nothing, the shape of god.
This poem was published in Rattle’s Poet’s Respond on June 13, 2021
One Divining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, water, words on April 29, 2021| Leave a Comment »
using words
as dowsing rods—
there, the current inside
Symbiosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, hummingbird, reader on March 31, 2021| 2 Comments »
These poems
are only words
nesting on a page,
but when you read them
they become
hummingbirds—
can you feel
how they are drawn
to the red flower of you,
how it is you
who gives them
the nectar they need,
how it is
what is inside you
that supports
their tiny
fluttering
hearts?
Thank You
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aesop, ars poetica, crow, fable, friendship, save on March 30, 2021| 4 Comments »
for all poetry friends
I am perhaps the crow
who, parched, unable to fly,
arrives at the pitcher
and realizes
I cannot reach the water.
But in this story,
there are no pebbles nearby.
In this story,
there are other crows
who arrive, each
with pebbles they drop
into the pitcher.
You, my friends,
are the crows.
Your words
are the pebbles.
And slowly, sweet miracle,
the water rises.