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How to bury a bone –
lessons from Jazzie – wise-woman dog
First, with great fervor, you dig, dig, dig, dig.
When the hole is just right,
drop in your treasure,
surreptitiously,
as if you were merely sniffing around,
not actually dropping in anything of importance.
Then, with your snout, sweep back into the hole
all the earth you have dug out.
Walk away as if nothing important has happened.
When inspiration strikes,
hours, days, or even weeks later,
dig it back up –
savor the transformation.
National Mall as Confection – Yum!
Like an unexpected gift this day
unwraps in sweet brevity,
February melting like chocolate
visiting on a whim
up from the Gulf of Mexico
to flirt with close-budded cherry trees
and tease the jackets off tourists on the Mall.
The sharp bite of winter
still lurks in the shadows,
but the sun-licked day is stretching itself,
a sweet confection
demanding to be savored.
Strange Ways
“You humans mourn in strange ways”
the voice wakes me from my dream
of backspacing to the beginning
on the old Underwood typewriter
my mother once used –
and I think, yes, how strange
to focus on the keys my mother tapped,
mostly the words of my father
so clear there was no
room for interpretation,
but the rhythm was
her domain alone,
where she elicited a pulse
from each word she typed,
black keys, white letters,
clickety, clickety,
white paper, black letters,
the words clear on the page,
yet still she would search
for just the right key —
but to what or to where
she never would say.
Ode to a Pelican
Oh, Pelican, thou art a gawky bird,
sitting there with stretched out neck, bald head,
elongated beak with that floppy pouch,
all out of proportion –
dorky, even –
that is, until you take flight,
rise into the air on mammoth, outstretched wings
so purposeful and graceful
as you soar above the sea
studying shadows in the waves
until you plummet like an arrow into the sea
and swoop up again, fish quarry flapping
iridescent in your beak
You seem to wink as you fly away –
“Know when to skim the surface,
and when to go deep.”
Walking on the Moon
Walking on the moon
cannot divine her mysteries
much better to balance on moonbeams
fall off into moonshadows
Moonbathe
lie naked beneath her silvery love
embraced by moonbeams in the night
pouring over you like liquid pearls
feel the magic in the air
become the cat
understand the need to prowl
at midnight
walk the alleys fences rooftops gutters
ancient reflected light
soaks into the fur-skin
deep into the soul
lap up the unconditional love
of her mother’s milk
feel her cycles deep within
the ebb and flow
constant and unchanging
through the millennia
breathe in the primeval air
breathe the breath ancient sisters exhaled
beneath this same Mother Moon
squint the eyes
see the moonbeam web of a thousand
million nights weave us together
know you are never alone
kneel in a birchbark canoe
pick up the paddle
watch the glimmer gleam
and shimmer
as you dip into the sheen
of liquid moonlight
ply the molten moonbeam waters
to the stars
join with past present future sisters
celebrate the feminine
honor Mother Moon
Jesus on the Ceiling
Jesus is hovering near the ceiling
above her hospital bed
my mother tells us –
but, the strangest thing,
His beard is melting.
These painkiller visions are not all bad,
can be comforting, really,
like a child’s prayer come to life.
Rather than the severity of my mother’s condition,
or because of it,
I zero in on the image –
“His beard is melting”.
What can this mean?
I always looked at life as a code
to be deciphered,
trying to figure out where I fit
in the grand syntax of life,
so this, this is a SYMBOL,
yes, in capital letters!
If his beard is melting,
does that make him less obscure,
more real, immediate, human?
Is this beard of Jesus’
like a veil between the worlds
that is parting, or becoming
thin and amorphous?
Her pain is so severe
I fear this thinning
may lead to surrender,
her suffering gone on so long.
I reassure myself —
she is Irish to the core,
will fight the very banshees
daring to wail for her demise.
But, will she deny Jesus?
Or,
will she peer up at the ceiling,
say,
“Yes, that is better,
I have always disliked beards,
but now, now I can go with You,
now that You have shown me Your face.”?
I had heard whispered stories from my mother about her father having been mustard-gassed in France while serving in the American Army in WWI, hospitalized, and then sent home. Grandpa himself rarely spoke of it, the war, the loss of many comrades.
It was only a few years ago when I happened to visit an exhibition of John Singer Sargent’s paintings, and came upon his large mural-like painting “Gassed”, depicting soldiers in the aftermath of being gassed, that the full impact of what my grandfather had endured hit home.
To see a small version of it, visit this link:
http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Gassed/Gassed.htm
This is a poem I wrote before I saw this painting –
PIANO WAR
My father sketches scenes from the War –
miniature soldiers in helmets with spikes
fly tiny biplanes, fire cannon and guns,
march into battle across the white page.
Then —
he sits down at the piano and his fingers pound out
the score to a silent movie of World War I.
Cannon explode, bombs burst and guns blast,
and I can see, almost touch, the men in battle,
the soldiers fighting, shouting, running for foxholes.
See my red-haired grandfather,
mustard-gassed in France,
returning home at twenty-one –
alive, whole, but for
the halo of sparse, white hair.
Past poems, to stoke and fuel the potential for further musings:
The following is NOT, by any sense of the word, in the form of a villanelle, but rather a brainstorm on what else that word could possibly conjure up in the imagination:
Seeking Definition: “Villanelle”
Villanelle? Ma Barker, Belle Starr, female villains both,
What about Calamity Jane, more misguided than villainess,
And she-done-him-wrong Jezebel, Delilah, Lilith, Eve?
Does the fact they are notorious make them evil,
And in whose minds, and what are the criteria, anyway?
And I know this is not right, but still
The word sits and taunts, tongue sticking out,
Going no, no, no, villanelle.
A villa with a bell tower in the south of France
Where I can hear Poe’s “tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells”
As Belle Starr says goodbye to Cole Younger and the James Gang,
Trades in her Bandit Queen six-guns for a ticket to France
And disappears from history to age gracefully
As Belle Etoile in a villa overlooking the clear blue Mediterranean?
And I made that up too, for I know the stories about her
Were mostly fabricated to sell The Police Gazette and she was shot
Riding her horse toward home and no one tried too hard
To find her murderer and she never got the chance to go to France,
But still the word nags, no, no, no, crying,
Villanelle! Ah, the pirate woman extraordinaire, in her wide brimmed
Hat with the white ostrich plume, gallows looming
‘Til she seduced the judge who set her free,
Her womanpower more privateer
Than the burn, rape, and pillage of less noble sorts?
The word snorts, then giggles, and begs me continue.
Villanelle retired to the south of France, joined Belle Etoile
In friendly female rivalry, as to whose press coverage
Was furthest from the truth, which men they bed in common
Or envied the other, not that it matters, for they stretched
The truth taut, into a fine skin for the vintage wine
They had become, Belle Etoile and Villanelle.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
SOUL ON WRONG
If you get
your soul on crooked
it niggles at your feet
like a lumpy sock
tickles your armpits
and itches your neck
like a label stuck
inside out
makes you scratch your head
wrinkle your brow
squint into the dark
and shrink from the light
pokes you in the ribs
saying
“something’s wrong here”
but won’t give you a clue
as to how to get
the wrinkles out
you can stand all day
in a steamy shower
and it will shrivel
even tighter
‘til you want to scream
“What’s going on here?
Why can’t I get it right?”
but you can’t get it right
as long as you’ve got
your soul on wrong.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
As the heat of summer descends upon us, it might be pleasant to revisit February
YUM!
Like an unexpected gift this day
unwraps in sweet brevity,
February melting like chocolate
visiting on a whim
up from the Gulf of Mexico
to flirt with close-budded cherry trees
and tease the jackets off tourists on the Mall.
The sharp bite of winter
still lurks in the shadows,
but the sun-licked day is stretching itself,
a sweet confection
demanding to be savored.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
And now, whoosh, it is May again!
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
FREE LUNCH
On my butterfly bush,
amidst the pungent purple plumes
perhaps in print too minuscule
for human eyes to perceive,
Nature must have a schedule posted
to have patrons so orderly:
Free Lunch –
Monarchs on Sunday,
Swallowtails on Monday,
and so on down the list,
from most regal
to the common white moths
on Saturday.
I watch each day,
yet never once do I spy
a greedy butterfly.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
HYDRANGEA
The hydrangea outside my window
are peeking through the glass,
blue heads bobbing in the June breeze.
They are chest high now, the blue ones,
but the pinks,
the pinks are
twice as thick and plush,
waist-level,
drooping with the
weight of their lushness
as if humbled
by the gift
of their own beauty.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
HUMAN
Three statues guard my garden:
Tawanda, the pre-Columbian goddess,
Cordelia, the flower girl,
and the green Egyptian cat;
stone eyes stare into space
in perpetual meditation.
Three gazes meet
to spark a sacred space
in which I sit,
listening to my heart beat.
Into the Healing Wood began its life as a photograph of the injury inflicted upon a Virginia Pine by a spurred and careless tree trimmer. Through the camera lens, more than the deep gash in the tree was revealed. I was compelled to look deeper, into this alternate scene in which sap hardens into a stationary tear illuminating the darkness, flows from beneath a glowing door and down a stepped path, and waterfalls over the edge of the gouge.
What world awaits behind that door is limited only by the imagination of one willing to go Into the Healing Wood.
Stancie's Fancies 