Bluejay's Wing

 

 

 

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

The first time I saw the sea, its reaching miles

of life and emptiness that twinned,

I was a barefoot child who thought

herself a woman, made of light

and incapable of sin.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

By day I scan the amber sky and feel

its cheapjack promise scratched upon my skin.

By night I scout the evercoming storm

with my bareback diamond eye

and heart of tin.

The sea is loud again today

with a spoken word of wind.

 

I see now how a palette rich with sun

bleaches out as monotone, greyscaled and thin,

its broken colors robbed of breathing light

as bluejays pale away on cloudy days,

their feathers keeping all the blue within.

The sea runs high again today

with a humming requiem of wind.

I'll never see again the dazzled tide; 

my age is given to the prairie wind

but I won't believe I'll never see the sun,

or the mottled azure delicately brushed in

to point and praise a bluejay's cunning wing.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets Poetics:

Opening Sentences

 

 

 

Note: My opening sentence appears in the last two lines of the first and final stanzas, and is from Justine, by Lawrence Durrell, the first book in his Alexandria Quartet, which I count among my top ten early influences in writing. And some may sense here another early influence, Emily Dickinson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, ©Zdzislaw Beksinski 

Wing of a Blue Roller, 1512, © Albrecht Durer

Off The Shelf Archive~November

Greetings and salutations, dear reader, if reader there should be. Since this little self-indulgent feature of mine gets almost no attention anyway, I've decided to just have some fun with it.

For the next few months, I'm going to be pleasing myself by pulling out all the poems of Edgar Allen Poe no one reads, or sees distorted in ubiquitous memes of varying, often dubious anachronism. The Raven is indeed a fine poem, but it's only a sort of condensation of Poe's ever restless soul in one particular place. So I'm opening the time capsule of my angst-ridden teenage poetry devotions, and putting some of my favorite Poe up on the Off The Shelf page. This will continue until I get tired of doing it, so bear up or pass along.

Many of these poems will be extremely lengthy by our modern standards--surprise! Poe was not a master of haiku or micropoetry, and the concept of less is more had yet to be discovered in literature, sometimes to his detriment, but often to our pleasure. Many will be sentimental, as only that age could be, unashamedly so. All of them will use a language we no longer have the time or inclination to employ, but that is an un-editable, infinitely rich component of why the poems work.

So, suspend your disbelieve, get out your black mourning bands, cameos, bottles of laudenum, rings woven from locks of hair from the dead, and most importantly, your linen handkerchiefs to soak up a solemn tear or those beads of a fearful sweat, and enjoy or ignore, as you so please.

We will begin with Spirits of the Dead, by Edgar Allen Poe,

here, on the Off The Shelf Page.

~*~

As always, last month's selection is presented for a final perusal--The Name of it is Autumn, by Emily Dickinson:

The Name of it is Autumn

 by Emily Dickinson

The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—

Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—

It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels— 

Image: Lake George, Autumn, by Georgia O'Keefe 1927

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

via wikipaintings.org 

Off The Shelf Archives~October

Fall is blowing in, and for once, it is cool and crisp even here in the Dust Bowl. My favorite season, Halloween (yes, for me it is an entire season) is here, and with it all the haunting music of the end of summer and the beginning of change. So I am not dithering about this month, but changing out the Off The Shelf selection to match the impending onslaught of fall colors with a short, brooding  poem by Emily Dickinson called by it's first line "The name of it is Autumn..."

In other news, I will once again be keeping with an All Hallows theme this month, as I have for the past few years, so you can expect a bit more of the dark to be showing up. My muse has been absent without leave a lot lately, but I will post whenever she deigns to cooperate.

~*~          ~*~          ~*~

Without further ado, then, here is Emily Dickinson on the Off The Shelf Page, and below, last month's selection Personal Helicon, by Seamus Heaney, for a last persual:

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

~Seamus Heaney

Image: Fountain in the Garden of Saint Paul Hospital, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh
via wikipaintings.org

Hope

It's still sinking in, that we won tonight. I promise to have some poetry up soon, but as I was watching this evening wind down, listening to President Obama speak, these words of Emily Dickinson seemed to float into my brain, so I'll leave them with you all till I am up and running again. Thanks everyone, for bearing with me through my political high anxiety.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

~By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.





Image: The Promise, by Rene Magritte, 1966
via wikipaintings.org
All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

Old Lace

 Old Lace

"I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."

~Emily Dickinson*

The banner was large but she was small,

and near as a girl's blue-gowned doll--

but still-- big enough to be

picked up and thrown down, so she

made herself small as poppy seed

blown away before she'd bleed

blackened snow

on another knot of dough.

Age began to twist-- and clutch--

to spot the careful square of lace with such

delicate blotted tears--

cindered brown the daisy years

to ecru tracery drawn of voids defined--

cool cotton-- on the cheek that pain refined

loss stretched shapeless, damp sheets rucked

by a called back touch.

It became her business only

to grow flowers for the lonely--

behind a closing door, a dreaming eye--

to listen-- in the wildest night 

to a pen scratching black on white

the buzz of bees in reverie--

to never see the sea--

to never see-- love be.

~August 2012

*in a letter to Thos. Wentworth Higginson

 

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poet's Pub

where Brian Miller is hosting a prompt about what might be hidden in the folds of that faded lacy hanky known as history.

Process Notes: I have made uncharacteristic and liberal use of the dash in this piece, my clumsy tribute to Miss Dickinson's iconic form.

Header Image: Emily Dickinson's grave in the family plot, photo by MidnightDreary

Shared under a Creative Commons License, via wikimedia commons
Footer Image: Cover of Poems, by Emily Dickinson, 1890
(archive.org) [Public domain], via wikimedia Commons

Off the Shelf Archive~April

Now that the poem a day challenge for April is mercifully past, it's time to change out the Off the Shelf page. I've been wanting to do John Donne for a long time, and am too tired to go hunting for new and exciting poems, so I'm posting an old favorite, in my opinion, perhaps one of the three or four best love poems ever written, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. 

You'll find it here on the Off the Shelf  page.



Meanwhile, last month's Emily Dickinson selection is below for a final read:

Three Short Poems by Emily Dickinson

To Make A Prairie

 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—  
One clover, and a bee,  
And revery.  
The revery alone will do  
If bees are few.

Wild Nights – Wild Nights! 

Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee! 

 

The Heart Asks Pleasure First

The Heart asks pleasure first,

And then, excuse from pain;

And then, those little anodynes

That deaden suffering;   

And then, to go to sleep;       

 And then, if it should be

The will of its Inquisitor,

The liberty to die.

  ~ all poems by Emily Dickinson

Image:Bumblebee on a Flower, by Adam Freidin, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Off the Shelf Archive~March

The month has flown by, and it's now April, so more than time for a change on the Off the Shelf Page. With the death of Adrienne Rich this past week, it's occurred to me how seldom I've featured female poets as a monthly selection, so this time I'm going for some short poems by Emily Dickinson. I often feel that Dickinson did better in her own style what so many contemporary writers try to do with their westernized haiku. She knew how to express depth,layers, nuances, all sorts of complexities, with a minimal amount of words that never  feels skimped.

These poems have been archived for the month of April, here on the

Off the Shelf Page

while the March selection, Ghazal of Unforeseen Love, by Federico Garcia Lorca, appears below:

~*~

Ghazel of Unforeseen Love

No one could percieve the perfume

of the dark magnolia of your womb

No one knew you made martyr

a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

A thousand persian ponies were falling asleep

in the plaza with the moonlight from your forehead,

while I held fast for four nights

around your waist, enemy of snows.

Between chalk and jasmines, your look

was a pale branch of seed.

I searched, to give you, through my breast

the letters of ivory that say always,

always,always, garden of my agony,

your body fleeing forever,

the blood of your veins in my mouth,

your mouth now without light for my death.

by Federico Garcia Lorca

from  Divan del Tamarit, 1936

Photo: Magnolia soulangiana 'Jane', by joy ann jones

© joy ann jones 2010