Exploring The Land Of Tears

"If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night."

"It is such a secret place, the land of tears."

~Le Petit Prince, 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Exploring The Land Of Tears

The explorer woke up.

It was a fine morning for exploring, and 

he set out to do so, as that was his job,

his job and his pleasure. 

As always, he looked for baobabs, 

as one must be vigilant, and

for flowers, though really, 

he had too many secrets about flowers--

but he walked for a considerable time

without finding either one, 

or any trees at all, or sheep, or small rodents.

Only the rock, without even a volcano,

and nothing at all

ephemeral.

He noticed he was growing cold and thought

'Perhaps I am on a glacier--it's very white here--

or perhaps I am on a moon.

He felt very lucky. 

(He was not an Arctic Explorer, and still less

had he had any adventures among the stars.)

He walked past nightfall, when he began

to feel  a tightness in his chest, as if

a yellow snake might

have given him poison

as if air was receding,   

as if the further he walked,

the further he grew from his search.

He felt clad in white stone

as reflective as the moon (or glacier)

where he ever more slowly walked, till

stopping, he saw just where he was,

knew that down his cheeks ran

the insignia of the close lost

land he feared, a place that had

made his reputation, a place 

he was completely

utterly

sick of exploring.

Instead, as he froze to

his tears, he looked at the sky,

at the stars, at the one star

where there was

the one flower

who looked like a common rose

but was not.

~April 2014

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Word List: Le Petit Prince

For the last day of April (YES!!) grapeling (grapeling)has us writing to a wonderful word list from one of my favorite books, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I leafed through it just to refresh my memory a bit, and there were more quotes than I could possible include that inspired this poem--thank you so much Michael, as I can conclude the month now with a poem I feel good about.

Images : Rosa 'Pat Austin' copyright joyannjones 2012-2014
Footer: Greenland Ice Sheet, Joshua Brown/ University of Vermont via NPR Online

Blue Wing

Blue Wing

Under the soft wing

in  the blue shell

wait an eon

to learn to crack.

In the twig nest

the down bed of breast,

wait forever

to fly.

Up in the cold air

the steel push and pull,

circle and wait

to fall.

~April 2014

Image: Drawings of a bird in flight, Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1500

Public domain via wikipaintings.org

 

Passage Via Storm

Passage Via Storm

I.

The slow night borrowed the clouds

to hide the dogwood moon

from the hard campaign that Spring

has brought to my country, 

her lightning spear, her

cumulus shield, breaker of brick,

hater of walls, knowing only battle

to make the blood winter-frozen

flow again.

The day stays back from

her junkyard growl, the leaves

turn inside out

to make this grey hour

castaway between dark and light,

to let me unbottle you here once more

where there's only clear sight

where life's gone past touch and guess.

So I say a few words soft as quicksilver

to startle out under the thunder,

fold these origami birds to fly

into my only answer, the storm 

of both life and nothing;

life in the rain,

death in the wind.

II.

There was a time when

this was your time

when the place I opened for you

would flow you to me, low pressure

along the dry line, where these words

these birds blew out as the shell-broke

cage opened up on moonmad night,

on the honeysuckle dance in our

silver skins, on the peace that comes

to those who look for nothing.

All those nights the light

we made was moveable,

taken into the darkness

on the wicks of our eyes

blue-bright in the empty black. 

But the flint-strike spark

of mind on heart, the paper lips

that ask for no other answer, 

the jasmine smoke burning

through the storm---that wasn't

enough show for you

and you passed on, not one

of the tribe that sees

how everything can belong

to nothing, even when

nothing is left.

~April 2014

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Open Link Monday

Image: Landscape in Storm, chalk study, 1885, by Vincent Van Gogh
Public domain via wikipaintings.org

Safe

W.T. Benda

Safe

A Rhyme Royal

Safe is frequently bought and sold

 in the marketplace of the faceless,

 their masks of wood or hard-bitten gold

hand-carved, hand-painted, the loneliness

lost with expression. The false-positive test

is smoothed-over, the feel symbolized

as only a mask can describe.

 

An infant subsists on its mother

for resolution to every disruption;

so the broken bend to another

in the masks that cover dysfunction.

 A commerce is made of protection;

the result is that safe purchased spot

for those who can't face what life's not.




~February, April 2014

A few months back, Fireblossom used the illustrations of W.T. Benda, one of which is shown above, to inpire us to write in a form known as the rhyme royal, explained in full at the link(this is the quatrain/tercet variation, abab bcc.) I started this back then, and have resurrected and revivified  it today for Margaret's Play It Again Challenge at



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Math Among The Poets

Math Among The Poets

In nights dark as red wine

bright as vinegar,

your hand was in mine;

it was the integer

found, the X over solved

the Y released,

so division  dissolved

so fools found peace

 

in a piece of eyelash revolved

in solitude ceased.

You swore there was logic involved

as we flew through the dynamic crease

but when the time came we went down
deep as a whale when it sounds.

~April 2014

When all else fails, write a sonnet.

Image: The Lover's Whirlwind, 1827, William Blake

The Leech

Lisa Gordon Photography

The Leech

After I died

they brought me here

or did I come here to die?

It's  hard to keep clear.

Still here

I am, a captured thing,

put in a white room where

they'd forgotten to bind me tightly. I

remember how close you came

that first time,

before I taught you better.

I think that was when I fell

in love with you. Your eyes

seemed to know the

difficulty of being a woman

without learning

to love pain, to see the locked attic,

the dead children,

my husband's fat red

face, my portion neatly totted up

behind the impatient

pig-pink eye, the closed fist

so different from your

smooth gloved hands, your

apothecary's fingers;  I can feel them

stirring mercury and poppies under

my skin, your leeches my sweet babes,

their bright mouths suckling out 

a stream of sins, your needles-full of delirium,

lighting flares in my eyes with alchemist's fire.

You called it medicine, I called it

paradise, 

or hell

as if I could know any more

the dissolving glaciers of days turned

into icewater sweat

collecting in my skull's hollows,

the snow of years

transmuted  to liquid

birthing  a belly of wildflowers

in  frozen-over fissures

now closing to a treatment

beyond all knowing

in a spring that never was.

~April 2014

found on the internet

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Interpretations with Margaret: Willard Asylum

This time in her Artistic Interpretations feature at IGWRT, Margaret Bednar (Art Happens 365) has introduced us to the Willard Asylum(operational 1869-1995) the photography of Lisa Gordon, who toured it and captured many striking images, including the one at the top of this post, and also the "Willard Suitcase" project of Jon Crispin, which sounds and looks absolutely fascinating, though it was not in play in this poem. For full details of the challenge, visit the toads link above.

Process notes: The use of leeches during the active time period of Willard Asylum is anachronous and used purely as a poetic device. 'Leech' is also an archaic term for a physician.

Top Image: Photo of Strap at Willard Asylum, copyright Lisa Gordon Photography

Used with permission