The Women Who Wait
If I need you,
will you come,
with love-put light
to drive away the smell
of man-sweat and boy-blood?
Here, the storms whip
and the shadows moan
black beneath the blue,
but I ask for—not so much—
roses under a peach sun,
the lifeline of sea, its sparkle, and
the whisper of wind in my hair,
telling me you are coming home.
My poem from the Oracle. I thought at first she wanted me to write about Penelope, but she wanted the message to include women everywhere throughout time.
The Songs: Sun, Moon, Earth
1.
She rises for others, but never as for us–
a long-bowed cello note sustained
as she wakes, red-breasted,
timpani beat the rhythm of the day,
joined by bird-flutes and wind-harps
while she dresses in gold,
she spins light in contrapuntal streams
with shadow rhythm. Our own star,
crowned giver of life and death.
2.
The moon sings with silvery voice,
her soft hums become operatic arias.
Though on her arid surface, men stood,
and watched the Earth rise. Still, but not silent,
no mere satellite, she demands the spotlight
shine on her. Owl-hoots, wolf-howls, rustles
of restless night creatures are percussion to
her melody. But in the morning, she smiles
as three crows call, the trees wave,
and the birds sing her a lullaby.
3.
And here-
we rotate, revolve, reflect in repeated reverberations—
Earth has its own music,
sea-sighs and deep-belly rumbles,
bird-tweets and dog barks, baby-giggles, and lovers’ moans.
Bangs and bombs, birth cries and death-rattles.
But listen as a rooftop fiddler plays
all the color, all the light–
the songs of earth, moon, sun, and stars.
For dVerse. Laura asked us to write poems with three separate stanzas using one of her word choices. Sun, Moon, Earth was the only one that really appealed to me.
Spring Came This Year
early in February—this year
the purple crocuses
yawned and showed us golden teeth,
this year,
the daffodils joined them in unexpected yellow
against the bluest sky, and
ignored Winter’s frost-breath. A last gasp? Uncertain,
we watch the feathered-clouds fly
this year, any year.
A quadrille for dVerse. The prompt word is gasp.
Spring Anthem
In spring’s slant shadowed light, daffodils,
like bright belles dance, unmeasured
in their joy, guileless
in their lemon-yellow gowns,
they rise unabashed from winter beds,
ready for change,
awakened.
If only we could learn
from them, from the budding trees,
the crows, and geese—the unquestioning tenacity
of life, to reset, to build, to amplify, to repeat–
to believe it’s not a quixotic quest
to acknowledge heartbreak, the systemic wrongs,
resolved
in this: our bodies belong
only to ourselves. Once daffodils, watch
as we become roses with thorns, cactuses with spikes, flowering
as we will. Ancient roots connect us, whispering of freedom–
soon, hear us like the sea, like a tidal wave,
roar.
I used a few of Kerfe’s Random Words. It is Women’s History Month. Over the weekend I heard or read these stories (among others):
This American Life: a doctor who is thinking of leaving the state of Idaho because of the draconian abortion law, which prevents doctors from treating patients, even preventing them from giving care in life-threatening situations.
Washington Post: Divorce and remarried women in Afghanistan forced into hiding because they’re considered adulterers for leaving abusive husbands.
NPR: The covert effort to get abortion pills into Ukraine.
The GOP is still pushing for voter suppression laws, and they have prevented the passage of new Voting Rights Acts, including the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Act. And in Florida, the governor is moving on with his fascist agenda. I imagine there will soon be statues erected and parades in his honor. Right-wing extremists (and the GOP members who enable them) are happy to keep people ignorant and fixated on fake issues. They, like extremists always have, thrive on hierarchies and fear of the other. Now, LGBTQ+ people are the others. I don’t like the term “woke,” but I’ll own it. What is the opposite, sleeping? Shouldn’t everyone in a democracy be awake (and anti-fascist)?
We watched the movie She Said about the New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey and Jodie Kantor and their reporting on allegations made of sexual harassment and assault made against Harvey Weinstein. I read their work when I was working on my book on sexual harassment and also Ronan Farrow’s in the New Yorker.
However, the holiday of Purim begins tonight. It is a joyous holiday—you’re supposed to drink! But it is also a story of Queen Esther and freedom. We plan to open our favorite Syrah, Blue-Eyed Boy, and eat a lot of Hamantaschen.
Democracy seems to be dying. We’re destroying our planet. And yet, there are daffodils. Spring is coming.
Gogyohka for Grief and Hope
follow the light
within the feathered beats of moon song,
a mockingbird sings of love and hope,
between the full moon and the new,
an eternity passes
At dVerse Open Link Night we are remembering Glenn Buttkus, who died last month. This is a poem I wrote just a few days after my mom died in 2020 in the first COVID wave. The human world was shuttered and silent, but spring just kept going on. Here, I’ve paired it with Kerfe’s exquisite Owl Moon. You can read the original post here.
She Knows
her sash,
like lilac is
an intimation of spring,
just this. . .she’s awakened, see her
hunger?
I know
my sash
like lilac is
an intimation of spring,
just this . . . I’m awakened, see my
hunger?
For Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday Ekphrastic Prompt. This is sort of a poetic exercise in syllabic verse. I wrote the first cinquain, and then I re-wrote it in first person, which I think empowers her. I love the way Sargent captured the light on her gown. You can almost feel the fabric, but it was that sash that first caught my eye, and then her direct gaze.
It Was a Week (in February)
It was a week of love and death,
of birth and yearning,
Winter holding tight, and Spring burning
bright on birds and flowers returning.
It was a week of wine and cheese
and heart-shaped things,
feathered clouds, like wings,
drumming rain, wind of violin strings.
It was a week of hawks and jays
of vulture flight
and shorter nights,
of elongated shadows in slanted light.
It was a week when war continued
and people died and lied, while some tried
to guide with firm stride
through the upside-down, and slippery slide–
of every week. But this week was not a love poem,
or maybe it was, this week of burning, turning, yearning. Or could be,
as winding like the river to the sea,
it breaks free. Maybe. If. Could be.
This year spring is coming very early. Our crocuses are blooming, and our daffodils are pushing up through the ground. Some places have daffodils in bloom already. We typically have lots of daffodils in bloom around Passover/Easter, unless it is a year when the holidays are late in April. But we still have days of wintry weather. I turned the heat off and turned it back on this week.
We celebrated Valentine’s with a wine and cheese virtual event from Tria in Philadelphia. We picked up the materials in the afternoon for that night’s event.
My husband’s birthday was Saturday. I made him a cheesecake, and we had food from a favorite Indian restaurant (and leftovers the next night!). I didn’t get a photo of his chicken dish.
On Sunday, we went to the Wilma Theater to see Kiss by Guillermo Calderón. It was the final live performance, but the play is streaming now. It is a powerful, moving, funny, shocking, provocative play. I just looked at my husband and said “wow” when it was over. You can read more here and also purchase a ticket for streaming here. We took our usual pre-theater walk.
We also watched the movie, Nanny (Amazon), that like Kiss, dealt with cultural misunderstandings, but also cultural displacement. It’s classified as horror, but it’s psychological horror with folklore. Anna Diop is excellent as the Senegalese woman working as a nanny in New York while saving money to bring her young son to the US.
I have a poem up in this month’s Visual Verse. I am in good company in this issue:
Jane Dougherty, Kerfe Roig, and Luanne Castle are among the published responses (so far) to this month’s image by Olga Naida. The Visual Verse images are always . . .unusual. You can read my poem, “Near Miss,” and see the image here.
You can read all the responses here.
And We Sail On
These memories,
gowned in blue, where the sun
tosses her honeyed locks and smiles?
All a dream of moon-mist and fiddles?
No, you gave me chocolates
wrapped in love. I gave you words
that bloom like roses, scenting
a summer night. Lingering
like the final notes of a symphony,
carried in both head and heart,
if we let them. Still water and shining sea.
All the light shadowing time—
and we sail on.
The Oracle made me work for this one! Today is my husband’s birthday. I couldn’t write a poem that was sad or angry, as some of her words suggested, but she also kept giving me chocolate and rose and smell. . .
The Fathomable Unknown
Pondering,
you recollect the past,
its sweat-stained shirts
and hulking monoliths–
describe the bells
so that we hear
the tintinnabulation,
the bell-swell, clapper-clang,
ding-dong, soul-singing
ring across the hills and plains
across the years—construe
what’s false or true. You,
Writer, make a city rise and fall.
Create a giant, defiant but
literate, stormy as a cloud–
wonder aloud,
grapple for answers
based in knowledge—
a girl, a famine, misogyny, religion—
the thousand indecisions,
the visions —
life and death
and forgotten facts
buried in earth and under snow,
but know,
like the snowbells, they rise and ring,
and like the robins they sing,
a song takes flight,
their wings catch the light
and a tale rises from the dust,
because it must,
a wonder of sorrow, regret,
love, or glory–
Once upon a time. . .imagine. You tell the story.
I revised this poem from last Monday’s musings and added the audio. You can read more about the inspiration and see more photos here. I’m sharing this with dVerse Open Link Night.
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 