The Sway
(A Love Poem}
So many years I dripped
your jade-clear love, my absinthe on
a melting sugar dream.
I knew the greenest green
that thrives above the ossuary
sprouting summer flowers made from bone.
Grey birds, their long legs trailing,
flew above the estuary. Water blue as
babies' eyes threw back the light of day
like knives to blind us as we rode upon the Sway.
You were born
to sit a wild-eyed horse in panic run
through the rainwater of a subsumed road,
to write the outlines of what never was
across the broken tips of Time's last rhyme,
to pick me like a lily in the dawn
then pass my velvet shadow to the moon,
gone like summer light that winks away
when caught in flagrant congress with the day,
like laughter floating out into the Sway.
So rock, sweet night, again tonight
as you have rocked so many times before
across the green expanse of yesterday.
You have a keener eye than bird of prey,
more melody beneath the fallen sun,
more teeth than any soft umbraculum
who tears the coral's painted skin away
and sucks its sweetness from the drying gore.
Rock before I wake and lose the way
just before I follow Love into the Sway.
May 2025
posted for Word Garden Word List
Notes: Umbraculum umbraculum, common name the umbrella slug, is a species of large sea snail or limpet, a marine gastropod mollusc ...found in tropical to warm temperate parts of the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, where it feeds on sponges...It has roughly 10,000 teeth in its mouth at any one time and will go
through approximately 750,000 teeth during its lifetime of up to ten
years..."~wikipedia (I have used my recently renewed poetic license to substitute coral for sponges.)
Images: The Green Fairy, artist unknown, via internet Fair Use
Blue and Green Music, 1921 ©Georgia O'Keeffe Public Domain
Mama mia. Call the gendarmes to escort me to fangirl jail on charges of felony gushing because here it comes. If I were in a bookstore poetry section and picked up a random collection and opened it to this poem, I would not have gotten halfway through before closing it and speed walking to the check out to buy it. Stuff like this is why I love poetry, and why it nourishes and sustains some deep part of me that only poetry can touch.
ReplyDeleteSo much about this poem displays your unique and amazing talent. The title, the fulcrum upon which this poem moves, is something only you would think to use in this way. Every image, every phrase stabs me in a marvelous way, right to the core. I could quote the poem in its entirety but will content myself to highlight that opening sentence, the summer flowers made from bone, the broken tips of Time's last rhyme, the lily, the green expanse of time, the fallen sun, your utterly original use of "umbraculum" and of course, the heart-rending bittersweet ending that sticks the landing perfectly.
This is such adroit, moving, skillful work, Hedge. I am blown away.
Thank you so much, Shay. I am endlessly grateful for your support and encouragement over the years, and so glad you liked this one!
DeleteWhat Shay said. Your poems are so worth waiting for. I swooned at the grey birds, their long legs trailing.......the poem just builds and builds with amazing imagery. Just an amazement of a poem to read and admire.
ReplyDeletep.s. So interesting about the umbraculum. When I looked it up it, in the singular, was a sort of umbrella to keep the sun off the Pope, so I went with that one.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's Latin for "umbrella." So it covers both. ;) Thanks Sherry.
DeleteOne of your best. Simplicity in so many of the images, but together complexity, like the 10,000 teeth of a sea snail. I love the opening lines, and the return at the end of each stanza to the rhyme and The Sway.
ReplyDeleteThank you, q. Always good to see you here.
DeleteYou've surrounded beautiful words with beautiful words..A lovely poem that leads us away.
ReplyDeleteSuch alluring imagery, combined with a singular emotional range and power. Gorgeous poetry.
ReplyDeleteThank you Dora. I enjoyed yours also, and kudos on your excellent prompt as well.
DeleteI just can't name a favorite part of this poem. I feel it would be an injustice to try. It is so beautiful, makes me feel love, escape from the harsh, bleak, the world has eroded into. Gorgeous writing.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Susie. Sometimes you have to look inside to get away from what is tearing you down on the outside.
DeleteThis is wonderful, Joy! I was lulled and soothed by the rock and sway of your rhythm from start to finish. You capture the essence of rebirth just beautifully. And this feeling of being at one with the shadows. I especially love:
ReplyDelete"I knew the greenest green
that thrives above the ossuary
sprouting summer flowers made from bone."
"Water blue as
babies' eyes threw back the light of day"
"You have a keener eye than bird of prey,
more melody beneath the fallen sun,
more teeth than any soft umbraculum"
❤️
i swayed. more than once. <3
ReplyDeleteWow Joy, this is one of the most gorgeous poems I have ever read!!! Every line, the flow and rhyme and everything about it make me want to hold on to each line a little longer!
ReplyDeleteHi Joy. I know you are far from the sea, but this flows with all the power and beauty of an ocean current, as though you are not just an inhabitant but a denizen of that deep sublimity. The title and closing lines *perfectly* describe the feeling of water- not just water, but the emotions within it. Sorry to have been absent, but you know how it goes - may we all be kind to each other and ourselves in this season and state of fire. ~
ReplyDelete