Selma Martin has reviewed my poetry collection River Ghosts. Thank you SO much, Selma. You can read her review here.
Selma Martin has just had a poetry book, In the Shadow of Rainbows,” published by EIF press. You can read about it here.
The Ancient Light Always Takes Me to Blue
Monday Morning Musings:
The Ancient Light Always Takes Me to Blue
Here again is blue–blueberry blue
and blue jay blue, the blue of morning glories,
robin’s egg blue to peacock blue, asters bright and bee-besieged
under the cerulean of sky, the azure of river flowing into green and grey
the blue of Earth, here to stay
till long after we’re gone, till our star expands,
and swallows worlds as amuse bouche before it dies,
but for now, there’s blue, and green, and
summer flowers of yellow and pink, red tomatoes,
and grapes turned to wine,
rabbits nibbling grass around sprouting vines,
robins in puddles, rivers with trout
that rise to breath as osprey dive–
this is what we do to survive. And–on cave walls, with sculptures,
scribbled marginalia in books, in songs and legends,
we tell stories that travel through time.
We are both base and sublime,
holding dust of stars and sometimes recognizing their light.
We had a short break in the haze and humidity this week when I got outside to see a bright blue sky and river. On Saturday afternoon, we visited Auburn Road Vineyards. It was a beautiful day, though hotter than I expected it to be. We enjoyed wine (Gaia, a red blend of cab franc, merlot, and Petit Verdot) and excellent wood-oven pizza and just sitting outside talking. I got out early this morning today when it was probably the coolest it will be all week—though very humid. We may get a thunderstorm in a little while, and a heatwave coming this week. I know it won’t be as bad as it’s been in some places, but 98 degrees F plus humidity is plenty hot—and of course it’s hotter in the sun.
We finished the second season of La Otra Miranda. We became so fond of these women and girls. I don’t think there’s a third season, which is fine. I can think of them all as settled and with bright futures before Franco’s rise to power. (Kind of like people in Florida before DeSantis, or LGBTQ people in many states.) We started Season 8 of Grantchester. I like the dark, angst-ridden Scandi-noir mysteries, but I also like this type of cozy mystery, too.
The Recollection of Light
The Recollection of Light
Now, after storm surges
the river rests, sticks out a lazy, argent tongue
to lick the rocks–
the sky is the blue of dreams
a red-tailed hawk screams as it flies by
the way summer does, graceful, demanding, frightening,
the way time does, circling and gone, replaced by another
bird, another flight.
The sun is warm honey on my skin. Silver-scaled fish shimmer like stars
at the water’s surface. They have watched death, but now they dance
to fiddle-sigh of the wind. They gulp if with each breath.
Hope floats on seaweed tendrils
through shadows into light, glowing.
My poem from the Oracle. Obviously, she knows how happy I am to finally see beautiful weather.
Sandcastle Junes
Sandcastle Junes
Sandcastle days in salt-tinged air
surrounded by gulls. The merry-go-round nights
when ice cream cones dripped on clothes and hair
breeze-whipped, then tied back tight–
the “please” of children for mini-golf or rides,
boardwalk strolls, a jellyfish sting, a cry–
sunbaked bodies and dreams quick-streamed inside
crisp sheets with stuffed animal friends nearby.
The B&B breakfasts, the grandparent-like hosts
catching up after another year;
rainy-day tea parties and many books read, all the ghosts
from that covered porch, laughter an echoed souvenir
from our children’s games and talks
of their seashell families, their imaginary teams
who played on beach and shared our walks
so long ago, it seems
like graffiti sprayed or frescoes layered, faded, and left behind—
the artist’s tag is time.
A late response to Punam’s “Vacation” prompt, shared for dVerse Open Link Night. My husband and I used to go to Ocean City, NJ in June with our kids, and we always stayed at the same B&B. We were trying to figure out how many years, and we think it must have been close to ten. It was such a low-key, relaxing time. Often we were the only guests there, and we sort of took over the porch.
Prosery: Illusions
Illusions
I stand up, my knee scraped, another stocking ruined. I rub my eyes. Was it really Paul, or simply my phantoms taking form?
Dawn is still a dream away. The newsstands are shuttered; the street’s empty except for skittering rats and weary nighthawks like me.
Soon the sun will rise and smile on the flowers. They will look up with open faces and smile back. But I remember trembling roses, their thorns no match for the monstrous mechanical birds we’ve created. London filled with rubble; Dresden destroyed. The giant cloud like a ferocious radiant rose, rising high in the sky, an Angel of Death that proclaimed, “for beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.”
If only I had known. I thought we were seeding a garden, but it was a mirage. And now I’m haunted by ghosts and the figment of love.
I’m continuing with my spy series for Prosery for dVerse. You can read the previous episode here.
Mish’s prompt verse comes from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.”
–from “The First Elegy”, Duinos Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
Meditation in Blue
Monday Morning Musings:
Meditation in Blue
Here is dance across water and sky
mirrored on mirror
wings fly
through light that is and will be
gone and always present
striking like a ball in Newton’s cradle,
dusting us with incandescence—
how I sit as the world soars,
how I am soaring, too—
turning, turning, turning,
each cell a tiny universe
connected through blood, stars, and time,
from almost-nothing–
compressed heat and bouncing photons,
the sun-queen smiles and waves from beneath her crown,
the life-withered not-so-ancient moon breathes mystery
and I almost ask her secrets,
but she has dipped my girl-skin in honey and dried it like leather,
placed a silver nimbus round my head to echo hers–
I know the answers are in bird-winged dancers
draped in blue, and
blossoms reborn like earth souls
again and again. Listen as the river chortles, then sleeps.
We haven’t gone anywhere or done much this week. Every day has been hot, humid, with a chance of thunderstorms, and I only walked outside on a few mornings. One morning, there were so many ospreys, geese, and one cormorant on the river at the park. Yesterday it rained most of the day, and north of Philadelphia where my sister lives there was a tornado warning in the morning. On Saturday, we attended the online launch of Black Bough’s Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things. It was quite full of wonderful things—poetry, art, and music. I am pleased to have one poem in the volume. After the event, my husband and I tasted the last two wines in one of our Master the World wine kits. This time 3 and 6 were both red wines. We really liked the expensive French one.😉 We started season 2 of La Otra Miranda. We’re watching it on PBS Passport.
Pandora
Pandora
Here at water’s lazy breast,
I scream,
play,
sing,
rip beauty from the air
to hold it close.
Here the bare rocks ache for their lover,
the wind,
he covers them gently in mist.
Here was honey, the air like mead, now it’s bitter–
this is the after of men.
Still, here I wait in purple shadows
for the storms,
and then the light—
the delirious song of being,
a radiant glow in my heart, hope locked within.
Another mythical whispering from the Oracle.
There is a free online launch for Black Bough’s Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things today/tonight. It will include readings by poets (including me), art, and music. Details here.
At the River Beach
At the River Beach
Here a thousand stones shimmer, twinkling like small stars
within be-winged tidal pools, these time-tinted rocks
tossed and tumbled by water, deposited on
beaches as smoothed offerings, gifts from ancient gods.
An imayo for dVerse. The prompt word is rock.
Book Reviews: Patricia M. Osborne, Karen Pierce Gonzalez, Alison Lock
Today on Twitter, Top Tweet Tuesday (@TopTweetTuesday) is all about sharing reviews instead of poems. It’s a lovely idea to boost others. I am so behind on reviewing, so it’s giving me a little nudge to get a few done. I apologize for lumping these lovely books together, but I did “meet” all the authors through TTT and Black Bough Open mics. I will also share the reviews on Amazon.
Patricia M. Osborne, Taxus Baccata (Hedgehog Poetry Press)
Taxus Baccata is pamphlet of nature poems, particularly trees, and the myths and folklore about them. The author dedicated the book to the memories of her mother and sister. I will admit that I had to look up the title to find taxus baccata is also called the common or English yew. Many of the poems give the trees personalities. I particularly liked “Patriarch” where a variety of creatures, including insects, squirrels, and people play and shelter:
“Up and down my trunk,
squirrels, badgers, and bats scurry
using my branches as a trapeze.”
“Stratford Mums” might be my favorite in the collection. In it, the swans with their cygnets swim up the Avon:
“She stops, long neck bent
into ‘C’ nuzzles
snow plumage”
Then again, it is difficult to pick a favorite here in this collection brimming with ancient gods, fairies, birds, and trees.
Patricia M. Osbourne is also the author of several novels. In fact, it seems like every day she comes out with a new one! She is extremely generous with sharing work and promoting writers. She often features writers and their books on her blog, Patricia’s Pen http://www.patriciamosbornewriter.com Do check out Patricia’s poetry and novels. You can find her on Twitter @PMOsborneWriter.
Karen Pierce Gonzalez, Coyote In the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books)
To read this book, is to immerse oneself in grief and dreams, to wander through an in-between realm where Coyote is a guide and companion. Tears come to my eyes, every time I read “A Photo Marked Only Kids, 1963”:
“But I see her. In the corner
of this black and white image,
the shadowed wingspan
of a bird flying offbefore the camera’s lens could catch her.”
But there are other poems that seem too intimate and heartbreaking to quote. Interspersed within the explorations of life and memory are the Coyote Dream poems. The volume ends with Coyote Dream X from which comes the collection’s title. This collection is gentle and jagged, like a western landscape; it is tender and aching, filled with light and shadow, Coyote “prefers uneven edges of nightfall.” A “Childhood Home” has only “barbed angles.” And yet, the land of this place also holds a “sun of enchantment,” wildflowers, and “fields of HOPE.”
If you ever have a chance to hear Karen Pierce Gonzalez read, do so. She is a dramatic, energetic reader, who always enlivens Black Bough Poetry Open Mic sessions.
You can find Karen Pierce Gonzalez on Twitter @folkheartpress
Alison Lock, Unfurling (Palewell Press)
Alison Lock’s Unfurling: poems as meditations and observations is that and more. Written during the Covid lockdown, as the author walked in the area around the South Pennines, these beautiful poems are perfect to read as mediations on the natural world. There are no titles, only numbers, and number 1 begins with the question, “What makes you feel alive?” It then follows with several suggestions, “the wingbeats of swans,” “or the churr of wren in tree?” The poems move through the year with striking observations of the landscape in different seasons.
Number XIV stands out to me:
“When you skim
a stone
across a lake,
know that
all water
aches
as it feels
the quake.”
This is such a beautiful collection. I would like to have it in print, but it only seems available on Kindle.
You can find Alison Lock on Twitter @alilock4
I will post more reviews today, if I have time! 🙂
Ways of Seeing
Ways of Seeing
“I am not what I am”*
said many throughout time—
twelve months, the year,
all the days, months, and hours—
love may penetrate umbrageous grief–
slant light in a bower,
but what you will, what might be,
in bee and blossom, there’s equal power.
This is dVerse’s Twelfth Anniversary, so for today’s quadrille prompt, Lisa chose the word twelve.
*William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Viola, Act 3, Scene 1. Viola is disguised as a man servant, Cesario. In Shakespeare’s time, Viola would have been played by a boy, and everyone would have understood the added meaning of this line. We saw two different productions of Twelfth Night recently. They were both excellent, but very different. Love is love is love is love.
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 