A Long Perspective

Tag: poem

  • Farewell

    Paris 2010 054When

    I am turned to ash

    I want you

    knowing

    that I hear your footfalls

    in the ancient forest,

    the scream of hawks,

    the water crazy-mad flowing

    down to the sea

     

    and I want

    you knowing

    that I see you

    on your knees in the garden

    your hands a riot of colors

    poppies, begonias, columbine and larkspur

    that grow beneath you, beside you, near you

     

    and I want you

    knowing that I feel

    your beating heart

    a still-questing spirit

    even with everything that has happened

    so when I am ash

    you will have these words

    to sustain you.

  • At the Poetry Festival

    IMG_2686

    The drums come from the back of the band
    the rhythm Jamaican
    the poet drifts to the microphone:
    “I killed a cowboy today
    I didn’t mean it.”

    We, the audience, shift over-hot in the room
    but pliant leaning into the beat
    as the poet sucks us in with the lilt
    of his accent blending word and note:
    “I killed a cowboy today
    Thought they was dead you know.”

    The trombonist
    with her lips tight on the mouthpiece,
    the guitar man nodding in sync
    the band loudens and softens
    watching the poet run this dream.

    He is reeling us in like a tame shark
    the whole lot of us
    over-eager, awkward,
    ready to fall in love.

    FE Walls

     

  • Apricot Moon

    IMG_2519

    Ignition on, the key worn down

    almost straight now,

    on the dashboard,

    a pack of Camels

    lying on maps among rock samples

    and tufts of tamarisk.

     

    Shirtless, you lean forward, turn the key,

    a birthmark flutters over your 6th vertebra,

    the engine roils in the guts of the Subaru,

    purple-gray mountains in the distance.

     

    We lurch through corridors of sand, pitted tracks,

    past tiny signs to Fault Wash, Vista del Malpais,

    a hard right, the key falls to the mat,

    the motor, oblivious, roars on.

     

    At the cliff, the clawed Badlands before us

    baked reddish-gold, dusk gathers up the warmth

    and the waxing gibbous moon rises.

    We lie on our backs in the sand,

     

    the trajectory of our eyes lifts to Perseus,

    son of Zeus, who rode the winged stallion,

    and fights on in the night sky.

    We dream the stories of the ancients

    from this cluster of our beginnings.

     

    FEWalls

     

  • Prism

    IMG_0209_1The glittering water pulses with rainbows,

    tosses off colors, swirling, a flutterance –

    no thought of loss or want or farewell,

    brilliance for a shilling or a dime or naught

    gathering the colors up again to shrug them off,

    twirling into the garden.

     

    Come back! See!

    The crows screech in the firs,

    the raccoons sleep in the fennel

    leaving the leaves tamped down,

    smelling of licorice.

     

    Silently, the crocuses raise their heads,

    clumps of purple, thin leaves arching,

    then, too soon, they fade into the soil.

     

    The bird bath stutters in the wind and rain.

    The waves lapping and overlapping,

    casting off colors with abandon,

    casting off the past,

    casting off you.

     

    FEWalls