My mother is poetry
“Ut pictura poesis” – Horace
Like peeking in the paper stacks of poems in the ice chest
Kept with frozen peas, frozen fish are frozen words
Taken from love statuses
Joy flecked in life’s ore, but mostly modem that has fermented
Into critique.
Walking my spaniel
at twilight–
down the hill, in back of
the house, the day lilies’
last gasps dangle
over one neighbor’s
stone embankment.
Not even the dog notices
the two owls flying
just a little above our heads–
only silence
on this slow humid evening,
I see their w i n g s p a n
one on top of the other,
almost touching–
dodging pine tree
branches.
The owls disappear
into a fog
of smoky green mist.
While we traveled on our way,
We heard the robin, wren, and jay.
I thought of many things to say
As we came to end of day
To find complete our work and play
And later learned to our dismay
A force of nature held at bay
Could not be dispatched away.
Oh, how I wished that you could stay,
But you were gone by end of May.
Before Alzheimers visited
her like a swarm
of bats, Jean Valentine
wrote Lucy, a chain
of poems about the fossilized
skeleton of a hominid, half
my size. Lucy
is part prayer, part
struggle. Faceless
presence, a repository
of grief & source
of the poet’s comfort. A black
& white shot of her looks
like broken
jewelry. No table
of contents, few titles, many
repeating images —- spiders,
stars, wildflowers. Rilke,
Chekhov, Williams
Lucy,
one long poem of bone
fragments stubbornly
punctuated. Poetry of open
doors, of possibilities, empathy,
emptiness. Breadcrumbs
scattered on a bare
kitchen counter, flower
seeds, whispered notes
of lullabies. Glimpses
of the lost
& forgotten.
How do you translate
the unconscious & invisible?
When Jean Valentine’s memories
began to unfasten
it was clear —- she was floating away
once & for all
from the book of fathers.
Jean & Lucy now singing
from the marrow, liberated
from curse. Jean & Lucy,
receivers of the dead
& unborn, wildflowers
that break rock.
Beyond the smell of moss and damp of Green River headwaters
Beyond the lavender breeze which lifts the feathered wing of Mockingbird flight over southern ring of the knobs
where blinding sun corners morning with the Pennyroyal Plateu
and where Miss Jane Baxter toiled with calloused hand, red, and dried as autumn kisses pinoak leave
Hungered and longing for the smell of turnip and mutton stew
that before filled the gapping holes and throbbing heart
All alone on Doctor Menifee’s tobacco plantation she softly strokes the aromatic strands that covered tender leaf underside – and touches the reaching shoots ordered along miles of trenched rows.
In her dreams she still hears the burning calls of Bonny Scotland
where kidnapped she traveled to this solitary place- she was trafficked- merely eleven in that year of 1753.
violently torn from her slain mothers bloody clinched hand
then onward stored beneath darkened ship hull
like luggage processed through Carolina port –
a long ride in buggy bed to the far Southern side of O’ Pinacles
a new life where the good Doctor’s erratic whims sternly force the commands.
With hungry field coyote she did sacredly roam
until sweet scent of evening prim rose cautioned her back home
calming respice seldom but sometimes found in sunray heated Blue Lick waters
she fully emmersed – always returning before she was missed.
You think it isn’t so, not brutally enslaved – it couldn’t happen that way
instead indentured servitude was the gift of her home.
But try to believe – it sometimes happens today
My 6th great-grandmother’s inhumane story
is true, carefully passed down, witness was bore.
Her resilient strength I have been blessed.
Bae, I’ll play my GREAT BLANK VODKA KAZOO
while you TOWEL off all that sweet GHOST FROST.
Don’t QUAIL – GRASP and TRACE the CRANE as you sit
in SHADE and WASTE my PASTE, TASTE my wicked
PLAID. QUOTE, OFTEN, TOWER BOXER COMET,
that failed lover who should have picked COVET!
TODAY, this handsome DRAKE will BRAID GRAND tales
ABOUT his WORSE ROVER, his RODEO
HORSE tireless in its QUEST to be your GUEST.
Dear, what is your IRATE TANGO ABOUT?
I TRUCK troth without lie’s TRACE, pen love’s TRACT.
My TRADE is RIDER, muff DIVER/DINER,
a QUIET TOTAL STRAY, STRAP-STRAW-sucking
love from the milkshake of your Wordle heart.
*June 19-30, 2023
this is no fiction
for good or ill
bose headphones
have become a go-to
sleeping pill
no more melatonin
wrap the ears with cushy
foam and like childhood’s
Wonderland or Grimm
the new yorker fiction pod
makes the world go away
love like lightning
affairs blazing/burning out
houses with rooms painted white
…and dreamland appears
alice munro raymond carver
murakami david foster wallace
eudora welty
whistle into both ears
a loaded shot gun of stories
that kills insomnia
Well I’m just plain, flat out grateful and didn’t know I would be. I was doubtful but gave it a try anyway. This poetry month has been rewarding, reaffirming, relaxing. I’ve been heard to say that I don’t write for recognition, I don’t pen poems for posterity. I just like the way words play with each other when I let them loose on the diamond. They rhhyme they cooperate they dance and sometimes they engage in pitched battle and reveal hidden context.
Thank you patrticipants
Thank you replyers
Thank you critiquers
Thank you organizers
I wish June had thirty one days
Charlie Bill
Charles William Dahlenburg
charlesdahlenburg@gmail
not even close a rhythm established
keeps me fed for the year
sam harris wrote something I must address
this final poem seems the place
‘confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.’
Is this not pessimism with a twist? An attempt at hope where I suspect he lives in cynicism?
the glass half empty instead of half full
or is it visa versa; I always get them confused
regardless I read on
Sam has some things to say that make me cringe think despair and despise the place he comes from to talk the way he does
and yet I am unable to stop
caused as I’ve become in this reading to challenge convictions while also-
thank you Sam-
idealize my idealism.
I’ll take that and write another poem about hope today
step into the studio the castle the gardens
praise the god of creation for whom I know not but think must be entwined in it all-
us all-
some way or another
wisdom and happiness are the birthright
confusion and suffering byproducts
of living amongst the many
getting to relate.
