tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60656020567547967932024-03-08T02:30:07.597-08:00A Lithe Necessityrowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-29778435125271544732010-12-18T12:08:00.001-08:002010-12-18T12:08:44.294-08:00Street Musicians<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span><br /><br /><br />In a dark mood, cropped,<br />I miss the scent of angels<br /><br />forgetting they are street musicians<br />drawing notes from whatever instrument's <br />to hand,<br /><br />forgetting they wrestle in caves to win.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-13906098085166600792010-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:002010-12-18T11:55:11.384-08:00The Artist Bursts In, Drawing His Knives<span style="font-style:italic;">“Angel of Death,” woodcut on paper, Leonard Baskin</span><br /><br /><br /><br />He cuts the feathers that are the shoulders of the angel of death,<br />the mouth that is the closed cave of the angel of death,<br />the nostrils that are the oubliettes<br />stuffed with black air that has our scent.<br /><br />The angel of death has our torso.<br />He greets evil black to black wherever it has torn us,<br />shouldering in wherever flesh lies.<br /><br />No shock for us behind that closed door:<br />the uncowering artist has stared him down,<br />exposing the jet hand that is the shadow <br />of the cock of the angel of death, showing us <br />how those feathers have taken the veins of our lungs <br />and filled themselves with our air.<br /><br />At our threshold the fierce, naked, <br />blessed artist imprints himself, making mortal <br />those square cheeks, those netted balls, <br />that white throat, those thighs.<br />He is our agent. The angel's eyes roll back.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-54628495184781287272010-02-17T17:11:00.000-08:002010-02-17T17:14:44.886-08:00Looking UpO, crystal sky of cold wind<br />and winking strings of stars,<br />eternity above the city street.<br />We cluster by our temporary hearths;<br />years fly, walls break, logs fall to grey.<br />We are diamonds, diamonds.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-55651765943118494432010-01-24T17:27:00.001-08:002010-01-24T17:50:32.206-08:00Unexpected HarvestOne part of moving to a new continent is getting to know the strange and remarkable flora and fauna. I gave up on trying to grow sweet peas and hollyhocks, but tomatoes were a joy to grow in the U.S., and I couldn't foresee any difficulty with parsley. Ah! "The best-laid plans o' mice and men.." But is it a bad thing that we can't control the outcomes of our endeavours?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Unexpected Harvest<br /></span><br />What a shock, after the parsley would not come up, though we watered it daily and pinched its weeds, after we'd given up hope, yet stubbornly watered on, finally seeing the row of reddish nubs like sleepy monks rising from the earth, their tight green curls askew, and we had <span style="font-style:italic;">rejoiced</span>, and tended, and watched the serrated row fill out; what a shock to step into the garden and see them gone - eaten back to bareness - and fat striped caterpillars belching, as we imagined, in their place.<br /><br />What were these pillagers? We knew what they ate. Against all reason we bought more parsley from the store to feed them in a screened bucket until they cocooned. Then, what a shock, one morning, to see the bucket full of Swallowtails! Great blue and gold wings quivering, gorgeous! We let them climb our hands, dry off in the sun, and go. I don't know. You plant parsley seeds, you get nothing but trouble and glory.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-35277655247350742012010-01-07T08:02:00.000-08:002010-01-07T08:28:55.329-08:00I Wonder About the ChoresWhen I wrote this poem it was in response to an anonymous 17th century pastoral oil painting of a young countrywoman riding a farm horse away from the small house between fields behind her. She was dressed for a journey, and there were bags tied to the saddle. I had an emotional reaction to the painting that took me a year to understand: I'd left my own family's small, Welsh dairy farm at 18 to move to a city, not knowing what I would need for my new life, and then I left Europe for the U.S. when I was 24 with a husband, a baby a few weeks old and two small suitcases, again not knowing what I'd need or where my journey would take me.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I Wonder About The Chores</span><br /><br /><br />I am traveling between worlds, <br />Nellie loaned to me as far as the town, <br />a stage to take me from there.<br /> <br />All the small fretting <br />of the work of this house:<br />I have left it.<br /><br />The gate that stuck against its post, <br />the poison ivy by the raspberries,<br />the crotchety old pump.<br /><br />The way to hang the copper <br />so it would fit in the space by the door. <br />Where the flour bin was, and how deep the remainder.<br /><br />(I always loved the sweet peas, <br />how they bloomed and swelled quickly <br />before summer could burn them.)<br /><br />I picked huckleberries in summer on the ridge, <br />stripped chestnuts in fall, hung clothes in winter winds to dry,<br />and pulled spring lambs from the muddy cut.<br /><br />I knew the stream for watercress,<br />and which wild roots could fill out our stew<br />when the cellar was empty.<br /><br />I knew the kindness our young cow required <br />to let down her milk: the low voice,<br />the smoothing of her flank.<br /><br />I knew how to keep brothers from fighting.<br />What to say to a mother so she wouldn’t despair,<br />to a father to keep peace.<br /><br />I wish I knew what skills will be needed <br />in the next place. (If there will be kindness.)<br />I wish I could prepare.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-41328116678444073822010-01-05T05:43:00.000-08:002010-01-05T05:51:03.788-08:00Alice B. Toklas's Third Rose“Civilization began with a rose. A rose is a rose <br /> is a rose is a rose.” -Gertrude Stein<br /> “...when she gets to that third rose she loses me.” <br /> -Erv Harmon<br /><br /><br />This rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall,<br />a yellow rose for spring and love and lust;<br />the third one was an eyesore, I recall.<br /><br />Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso blazed our hall<br />and forced the careless caller to adjust;<br />this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall.<br /><br />The weather then broke green all over Gaul,<br />the roses burst, the bushes were robust:<br />the third one was an eyesore, I recall.<br /><br />Still life brushed could not be still at all:<br />red roses scrambled up the wall untrussed;<br />this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall.<br /><br />The first rose rose rose fiercely tall,<br />the second rose was yellow, lovers' trust;<br />the third one was an eyesore, I recall.<br /><br />A modern rose is summer's richest scrawl<br />though winter's withering leaves it undiscussed;<br />this rose I gave to Gertrude in the fall - <br />the third one was an eyesore, I recall.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-71343663084174032662009-12-30T09:38:00.000-08:002009-12-30T09:43:45.709-08:00Haunted HouseO haunted House of black mirth, tell us true:<br />are outer workings of your grizzled face,<br />your pointed barbs, sarcastic derring-do <br />whilst ruthlessly unravelling each case<br />just a ruse? I swear that I have briefly <br />seen a kind of nurturing sweetness shine <br />beneath your clever visage (which chiefly<br />mocks): a kindness working to undermine<br />your contemptuous front. O brilliant man,<br />addict to music, puzzles and drugs, much<br />like Holmes in his day of mysteries, we can<br />see how you need a shrunken leg’s crutch.<br />Medical sleuth with guarded, arctic glance,<br />a heart beats still beneath your arrogance.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-47556226915838995202009-12-30T09:04:00.000-08:002009-12-30T09:07:06.737-08:00Teen GhostNovember in Wales is a clammy beast <br />dripping chill rain: at night, disconsolate <br />it rattles the house, screaming;<br />our grey farm road in the early hours<br />is a stripe on its back oozing cold sweat<br />hedgerows of stinging nettles and brambles<br />its bony stickles - its drool runs down my neck <br />as I stand waiting for the school bus.<br /><br />I kissed an American boy in England this summer<br />before my family moved to this new country<br />and he writes still, though we won’t meet again.<br />I am stuck here with this other, terrible kind of contact:<br />you by the window in your white dress, dissolving<br />sobbing as though your heart would break.<br />Why do you cry? It won’t solve anything.<br /><br />I study physics at my desk by your window<br />write letters to the friends dropping back<br />listen to the rain beat down on the cowsheds.<br />I try to sleep sitting upright with the light on.<br />I hate being able to hear you! You’re dead!<br />All your sobbing won’t stop you fading away.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-19056884785341188792009-12-12T08:23:00.000-08:002009-12-12T08:24:57.684-08:00We dip our toes into an estuary, the morning after the wedding,the young women stripped to their skivvies<br />leaping into the cold clutch of the water,<br />a seal rising to look.<br /><br />There are no boys the right age, <br />only small brothers, cousins <br />and older men having a smoke.<br /><br />We aunts and uncles long <br />to plunge ourselves into that fresh water, <br />but do not, with our return journeys beginning.<br /><br />Or perhaps what keeps us from it is imagining<br />our middle-aged flesh in wet underwear, <br />nipples and hair showing through. <br /><br />So we keep our clothes on and wade, and swing pebbles.<br />Remember being young, burning in dark water. <br />Aberystwyth Bay, March, 3 a.m.<br /><br />I count thirty-four swans easing towards the horizon.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-6671312280628378822009-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:002010-12-18T12:02:19.195-08:00Time like locusts, my house like after thievesWhile I<br />naked from sleep<br />warmed by an unexpected<br />benificent, empty hour<br />this morning waited, hopeful<br /><br />like some other tree<br />when a redwood falls in the forest<br />and there's a pouring-in of light,<br /><br />locusts darkened my house<br />swarming through the windows<br />onto every surface<br /><br />and, shocked <br />I leapt up to sweep them from my desk<br />but they returned thickly<br /><br />and I knew it was over<br />knew only when nothing alive<br />was left in the house<br />would they go, that if I let them<br />strip it all away<br /><br />if I sat as if dead, as if not caring <br />whether there was sun<br />I could start again, perhaps <br /><br />after a while <br />from floorboards, from the gloom <br />of the forest floor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span></span>rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-47335729094675243102009-12-08T05:06:00.000-08:002009-12-08T05:07:44.786-08:00ResurrectionWe approached the clean edge of the grave hole <br />my sister and I.<br /><br />Mary wound on the film of her new Bakelite Brownie <br />lining up a sharp picture.<br /><br />We shouldn’t have seen how naked he was <br />the rusted arrowhead between his ribs.<br /><br />Not just left behind, slumped from a battle <br />but laid out feet to the east in a Christian burial. <br /><br />An Anglo-Saxon warrior, he was. We could see his teeth.<br />They took him up out of the ground to the Reading Museum.<br /><br />He thought he was going to lie on the chalk under the earth <br />until Christ came.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-7622511078884405932009-12-07T19:07:00.000-08:002009-12-07T19:24:26.309-08:00the night we took fish from our own river and the police camewhat a black night <br />thick rain <br />branches knocking windows <br />water tearing through gutter pipes<br /> <br />a car’s engine roared up the hill <br />and blue lights came flashing <br />into the farmyard <br />I grabbed both beautiful sewin <br />ran upstairs <br />to hide them <br />under my sleeping sister’s bed <br />and back down to the kitchen <br />full of teenagers in raincoats <br />where I watched the porch door open <br />saw a fishing gaff propped <br />against the inner door <br />and someone stepped quickly over <br />as if in greeting <br />to hide the gaff with his body from view<br /> <br />the policeman entered <br />looked around <br />wishing us noswaith dda a good evening <br />asked about our neighbour <br />at the next farm <br />what we knew about him <br />whether we had seen him<br /> <br />surprised <br />my father said he came for milk <br />twice a week <br />carrying his can<br /> <br />it was hard looking innocent <br />when so many of us were <br />dripping on the floor <br />fresh blood pooled <br />on the kitchen table <br />the policeman did not mention poaching <br />had bigger fish to fry <br />he told us <br />our neighbour had been on the run <br />for years <br />was wanted for murder<br />wore a wig <br />carried a loaded <br />gunrowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-18779970827191400692009-12-06T13:19:00.000-08:002009-12-30T09:56:43.150-08:00InsomniaHow heavy the pull of sleep seems now<br />while hidden clocks are sucking at the dark<br />and python sheets, sensing a soft throat,<br /> close in. Beyond these thin walls<br />bleached winter streets wait, silent<br />for the shocking wail of the early train<br />and though, in distant buildings,<br />others toss too, and fret, I can<br />only think of the lucky ones: couples<br />and their dogs, padded down<br />while my solitary, thundering body<br />races on bleak rails through iron fields<br />into the mouths of towns, screaming.rowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065602056754796793.post-55283010569669355002009-12-04T19:34:00.000-08:002009-12-30T15:18:06.052-08:00Poems, Like Salmonbrought in on the tide to the untidy estuary<br />the landless river opening<br />the narrower and narrower<br />less and less salt flow<br />they thrust themselves into the high reaches of water<br />flash brighter than the fact of a saint’s grace<br />than the white arm of a dancer beatified with jewels<br />than the arrow of a goddess unable to miss its mark<br />where the light air touches them<br />where the sun blesses their ascent<br />and magic vapor sheds its dust on their lithe necessity<br />yet many fall back to the dark rock shadows<br />the burden of their eggs still on themrowemaghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12260538772090312186noreply@blogger.com0