Last Light

 

 

 

Last Light

 

 

"All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born..." ~W. B. Yeats 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was born

in the black and white,

a changed place still living what had been,

a winter child in a fossil's spring of

sun and shadow, war's unmercied clarity

and the trampled mud of peace,

 

its empty whiskey bottles

and gardens of shaded violets, deep

black soil, black thunderclouds, 

white winter sky, blackened medals,

white gauze veils packed away 

in crackled trunks.

 

Now I live my last in a red dirt country

where the heat-song of September changing

dips the fading wheat in ginger honey. Wind-weary

trees lace still-green leaves thru the soft

reaching fingers of clouds, holding tight

before their scarlet fall.

 

Earth is whispering her love words

in the rustle of sundried grass

and blackberries tumbling over with

thickets of banquets in seedy puzzles.

When I turn to face the setting citrine sun

it's you I call to the open door

 

to sit beside me in the shortening days

drunk with bees and crow-call,

rich with the gatherings of every flower.

Won't you come, beloved,

before January rimes the windows

with its deep blue loss. 

 

Come to the place 

where you can't be forgotten.

Bring your cinnamon september skin

and your wild silver-grass hair to these ruins,

and your campfire eyes,

alight in the night of dreams so far

 

beyond the black and white.

Lace your fingers with mine

as trees do with the sky,

separate and one

where the fire of what was

in the hope of what may never be

 

is the only light left

before the scarlet fall.

October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted for earthweal's

Lyre For A Changing Earth

 

 

 

 

 

With thanks to Brendan for the poetry of W.S Merwin and others which inspired this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: My mother with myself at 2 months of age, Evanston, Illinois March 7th, 1949 

House North of Nash, Oklahoma, 2022  photo © Terry Wassan   via internet   Fair Use

Witch of Tides

Witch Of Tides

I. The Wet

I cannot be

the Witch of Tides

with her greenalive

and mutable eyes

with her wavefoam curls

her saline sighs,

but only the constant

Crone of death's dust

where all things fall

because they must

when they've bled out to nothing

their sweet salt blood.

We meet in that place

neither sea nor shore;

the liminal wing, the liquidless pour

not wave nor field nor barren waste,

only a dead god's breathing face

on which we stand, the Witch and I

where three winds vie

to make the storm of rattle and fly

where the veil is rent,

where One and the Other

can mingle unkempt.

I cannot be

the Witch of Tides

whose toy is life

whose palette is clouds

whose hand is so wet,

but only the Crone of a

soft and dry

and whimsical

death.

II. The Dry

Yet her blackened

inversion am I,
with my sandy surf
of dead glass and dry

pushed and rolled
like a moving eye,

tho the sweat that's brought

is the only salt

except alkali.

We both have our wrecks

of sphinxes and ships,
of stones and decks,

of cities buried

with a murderer's care,

a privacy to the ones we hide,

shrouded in the swirl of our hair

as their world dies;

and who is to say

of the wet or the dry,

which was the Maiden

which was the Bride,
the constant Crone

or the wild Witch of Tides?

~October 2015
Reposted January 2020 

for earthweal

Though it may seem strange to post an old poem to such a brand new site, this one simply selected itself from my memory banks, so I hope I will be excused for letting it have its way. In its own equivocal voice, perhaps it addresses some aspects of the weal of the earth.

Top Image via internet; author unknown. Manipulated. No copyright infringement intended.
Great Sphinx and Pyramids, circa 1890 via wikimedia commons
Manipulated. Shared under a Creative Commons License

Concerning Grace

Concerning Grace

(Two Sonnets, with an Optional Epilogue)

I.

So here's the one whose time has almost gone
who plays in ashes wishing they were fire

who plays with leaving, wishing to linger on
who never knows a quickening desire  
except to rue that sunset follows dawn,

(sleepless, the dark brings out a red hot wire)

where all night's horses trample Hyperion

where every hope is gutted for a lyre.

Grace would be a welcome thing to save

as a thousand mouths split open at their seams,

all bored but quite unable to stop the screech.

Grace here would be a welcome thing to have,

dividing dark from light in separate dreams---

but grace is grey and dancing out of reach.

II.

All things have a radiance at the start
when life is burning like a star that falls
when passion is a door that swings ajar
to a room that never was a room at all.

But I am a thing whose time is almost done

a seed that shattered back on the recoil

that spent its force in cracking mountain stone 

put down its root in dead indifferent soil

thinking it could color and unfold

like Eos blooms her brother's fiery ball

from horizon to horizon, red to gold,

its petals scented jasmine as they'd fall.

Life yields a withered stalk, but gives me grace

to die and leave some richness in my place.

~July 2015

Process note: In Greek myth, Hyperion is the Titan of light, father of Helios, the sun, Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn.

posted for    real toads

Weekend Challenge: Goodness Gracious

Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily) asks us to say grace, or at least to speak of it, think of it, and perhaps even write a poem about it. I have chosen to do a couple of sonnets, as grace seems a topic suitable to such. (The first is Sicilian, the second, Shakespearean, hopefully.) 

And for STRICTLY OPTIONAL reading for those who prefer free verse, or who are gluttons for punishment, to complete the theme of 'Three Graces,' I include as an Epilogue my egregiously long, semi-free verse, fragmented pre-poem these sonnets came from (*definitely* a draft!) below: 

Epilogue: Broken Notes on Grace

A thing whose time is almost gone

must look for grace to stop its lingering on;

each moment spent within that lingering

groping for the finick'd forgotten fingering

mocks the spark it once knew how to burn

in ashes of what's gone and all in vain,

for that will never give its light again.

       

~*~

Grace eludes in this clamoring dream

where a thousand mouths split open their seams 

bored but unable to stop their screech

as it dances by, out of their reach.

~*~

All things have a beginning

when they are radiant

when for a moment

they are potent

when grace falls open

like a well thumbed book

to the favorite mark

when grace is a door

without a handle

without a hook

that opens to

no room at all.

But I am a thing

whose time is done,

spent seed that once blew

too dry and far, that

spent all its force

to crack the stone

put down its root in poisoned soil

thinking still it might somehow unfold

instead grew spindly, twisted,

finally cold.

Now in the time of withering

I look for grace

to untie each starveling leaf

and let it fall--

some richness for this tight atomic dust

before the coming winter takes it all.

Images: The Three Graces, 16th Century, by Corregio

Public domain via wikimedia commons

Winter Sunflower, copyright 2014 joyannjones