Tuesday Poem: An Announcement

I am so pleased to announce that my first book, Firefly, Brightly Burning is now available at http://www.graysonbooks.com and from Amazon.com

Tuesday Poem: from my April Daily Poem Notebook

Nerves

filigree out, against the dark background,

like thin branches, rivers, roots, arteries

veins, winding country roads, mapping

a woman, the nerves of her brain outlining

a skull, the eyeballs attached gazing out at us,

the nerves of the arms spreading wider
than arms, more like billowing sleeves
leading down to the hands, the nerves of the legs
curving wide as a full skirt, looking gauzy 
and sheer as hand made lace, giving her 
girth and presence, the channels of her 
pleasure and pain, memorializing 
a lifetime of sensation.

A woman donates her body to science,

and doctors make her into an archeological dig,

painstakingly excavating her fragile
nerve network, easing them out of muscle
and flesh, cleaning away all fat and blood,
until she is a white tree reaching down
toward the earth, all twig and root,
eyes seared by light, no longer
protected by sinew and bone,

attached to a delicate net cast wider

than the body that once contained it,

as if she were frayed into tatters

by all she’s seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled.

This is what a women wears

beneath the skin: a big lacy dress of pain

pulsing along from synapse to synapse,

and global gushes of pleasure that travel

everywhere at once, galactic as the Milky Way,

nerves that reach beyond the body’s tidy

boundaries, rivering out to connect with

a matrix of others, until we come undone.

We moan, and flush, tremble, holler, and weep.

And men are driven to make it into geography.

Tuesday Poem: After a Long Hiatus, Luna Returns

Luna’s Trues

Hide your potables, put ups,

self-growns, and happy tools

whenever they’re not in hand.

Whatever home you make must be

up high on a hill, or stilt built, or tree

supported to withstand the waters’ comings.

Always carry a knife and a bag for forage

you stumble upon. Pass it by, it will surely

end up in the bag of who’s behind you.

Barter as much as you can,

for trade is a two handed benefit.

Be wary of poison places. Even a tread-by

can leave you weakened and sickly.

Take to a cave or a dug out place, if there’s to be

spiral winds and or close in lightning.

Never eat what grows near the engulfments.

Learn everything you can from the animal folk.

The ones, that are left, be little survivors.

A body only needs one bit of food a day.

Eat what can’t be salted or dried up first.

Waste nil. Eat what’s there even if

it makes your belly hurt

Most things got a repurpose. Our job to find it.

Trade what you can’t use. Discard nought.

Salvage what you can from every wreck.

It’s a gift from the hand of the dead.

Grow what you can, when you can, where you can.

Greenhouse an old car, or chicken coop it.

Dirt-full planters make good insulation.

Grasses love a roof, and so do edible mosses.

Rainwater is a gift and it must be treasured.

Fouling the water is poisoning yourself.

Bug bread tastes best with salty 
seaweed soup or juicy mushrooms.

Feed a stranger just enough to give them 
the strength to move on.

Do not allow strangers into your nest.

In the conurbations, 
you’re no more than a field mouse.

Beware. Traps been set for you everywhere.

Most of what’s people-made will 
degrade the air if you burn it.

What weather delivers comes straight 
from the heart of the earth.

 

Tuesday Poem: Part of the Post-deluvian Water Series

Drones

Many’s the time, Luna’s spied those

hovering metal hummingbirds overhead,

or buzzing by the windows over and over,

till Sol made an ugly face and gave them

the finger. Many’s the time the two of them

were moved to head into the thickest woods,

so as not to be watched any more, pretending to

heed the hunter’s call to enter the letup of leaf cover.

When they heard, at Kin Gather, about
the young ones squatting in Hill Wagon,
all three of them nullified, where they stood,
for smuggling, and it being the same
kind of drone, Sam shook, and Luna sobbed
until she fainted. From that day on, when the
buzz come, Luna had to lie down, and Sol
made an effort to smile and flash the peace sign.

Tuesday Poem: from The Water Series

The Sink

Luna visits the dying: house after house,

slowly yielding to tidal hunger,

all roof waver, and shingle warp,

like fish, someone caught and abandoned,

scales curled and lifted by the too hot sun,

smelling of woodrot, maggots and mildew,

windows gone cloudy and wall-eyed.

Doors darken from the waterline up.

One day, a whole section of wall

slides away and gulls hop in

for a once over. Then reeds push

through what steps were left intact.

A narrow dock holds fast to its

sodden pilings until it floats, like

Charon’s raft, off to the underworld.

Luna meditates on gradual decay;

what it leaves behind and what it takes away.

Tuesday Poem: Another From The Post-deluvian Water Series

Naiads

Twice a year are the rememberings.

Each Naiad stepping up and doing her part

as spirit anchor, holding on to what was,

and what could come again of water’s blessing.

It’s a conjuring: first, faucet water,

sweet as wild grasses, with no

after taste of the barrel,

then showers falling inside the house,

all unctuous warm, softening

muscles, pinking our bodies cleanly,

mist and drizzle dancing in the air,

bringing earth smell to its full musk, neither 
drench, nor hammer, nor sodden destroyer,

streams brisk on the face, sweet and

cooling on the tongue, a gurgling

tune played on downed logs, twigs, and rocks,

heavy buckets of bounty rising

up the well shaft for all to share in

every manner of sacred ablution,

fountains shooting crystal arcs into

the heat of day, glazing graceful iron babies

and birds, sending the rest of us blessed spray,

rivers benign and lazy, that never once raged or

spilt over their banks, engulfing houses and 
towns, leaving mold tentacles to 
fester behind the recede.

The clear debris-free pond, the rocky cove,

the waterfall, and moss grown creek,

the benevolent silence of the snow flurry.

Luna’s remembering is the lake’s

cool silk, the way it held a body afloat

without you going all rashy and burning.

Each Naiad leading the rest back to

Paradise, water as it was 
when we were innocent: free and clear.

Tuesday Poem: From The Water Series (Post-deluvian)

The Comb And The Mirror

The comb for our failure to honor chaos,

the way we try to untangle the world,

the furrows we cut, and other ills.

The mirror for our over love of ourselves,

the way we think dominion over other creatures,

for shackles and blades and all demonic devices.

Too many times, Luna spies
one or the other at Barter, though
nowadays, no one will touch them.

That’s when her whole body
fills with dread of the tempest,

for comb and mirror stir up
the old woman’s anger. She tosses
in her sleep, and soon come a whirl

and a hideous pelting, the spinning
edges of wind heavy with water,
soon the rise of white mares

in the waves, the sky’s dark keening,

the punishing hand of Marina smashing

everything we make into matchsticks.

When it’s over, survivors try to

make amends by letting go

pairs of sparrows, into the wreckage.

And Luna has learned much from

watching these little survivors

as they glean what they can

from nature’s fury

Tuesday Poem: From The Water Series

Mermaid/Man

Luna and Sol take turns

diving into the engulfments.

Buildings listing this way and that,

barnacled shipwrecks, most of their

window glass broken, or already salvaged.

Big wooden houses like temples adrift on the tides.

She sees others like them,

brightening near the surface,

darkening as they go under, trolling for

the souls of the drowned, caged as they

came to be, in boughten goods, in pretties,

usefuls, things you can hold in your hands.

Luna finds a plastic bucket, a sand etched

green glass bottle, a box of sodden

paper she can pulp and dry anew,

a camera filled with water

and tiny jellyboys.

Best is a jug unblemished,

she can plug with one

from the box of stoppers.

Sol saves his vigor for tools.

Tuesday Poem: From The Water Series

Snowdrop Soup

is what Luna serves him.

She forages and all she can

find is these, with their little

white heads and greeny secrets.

Months of being cooped up

in their too tiny space,

inundated with snow, after

heavy wet ice, after hailstone

and rain, wind whipping

beneath the floorboards, stilts

rattling a rough tattoo.

There were shriveled carrots

and mildewed beets left,

to throw in with a brackish

draw from the well, her

put-ups all but decimated.

She spies them at her feet,

clusters of early March milk maids,

a first flowering, stoop-shouldered

and shy above the sooty patches of melt.

A gift, she thinks, from the angels,

for ain’t she like Eve almost? Needing

a little swig of the hope, after

losing so much that was good?

Too late she remembers their other name:

death’s flower, so beautiful were they,

once she clipped them, like mermaid’s

hair drifting across the bowl.

He gobbled them fast, and she did too,

so craving of green were they, and then

the cramps and the stomach flips set in,

the two of them dizzy as love sick fools.

Giddy, he says, with spring just round the bend.

Their guts will mend, since at least she

remembered to leave bulb in the ground.

She doesn’t tell him the story. Maybe

next year. Pictures how hard their

empty bellies will shake when they laugh.

Tuesday Poem: From The Water Series

 

Drawing By Sally Rendel

Old Woman’s Aria

What a boon, what a boon, what a boon!

to live in an empty honey crock tucked into

the long brown bones of a hedge.

O bee hieroglyphics!

O nectar and reverie!

O to row out in half a walnut,

to meet this drowned world,

with its blessings of barter and trade,

its mud that spits out stones for ballast

and jars, those glass beatitudes,

that rise up singing out of the muck,

jars, clear and intact, no matter to me

how small they be, or what they held once,

jars I catch the rain in, the best ones

begging to be filled with potables,

to be sealed with caps I make

out of crayons and candle scraps.

O to be washed sweet again by the rain,

to savor the taste of a memory, though

the poor bees, themselves, are gone!