ELEGY IN APRIL AND SEPTEMBER

-




------------------------------------------------------------------------------








Hush, thrush! Hush, missen-thrush, I listen...
I heard the flush of footsteps through the loose leaves,
And a low whistle by the water's brim.

Still! Daffodil! Nay, hail me not so gaily,-
Your gay gold lily daunts me and deceives,
Who follow gleams more golden and more slim.

Look, brook! O run and look, O run!
The vain reeds shook? - Yet search till gray sea heaves,
And I will stray among these fields for him.

Gaze, daisy! Stare through haze and glare,
And mark the hazardous stars all dawns and eves,
For my eye withers, and his star wanes dim.


2

Close, rose, and droop, heliotrope,
And shudder, hope! The shattering winter blows.
Drop, heliotrope, and close, rose...

Mourn, corn, and sigh, rye.
Men garner you, but youth's head lies forlorn.
Sigh, rye, and mourn, corn...

Brood, wood, and muse, yews,
The ways gods use we have not understood.
Muse, yews, and brood, wood...  








                                        Wilfred Owen
















----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

all things in due time

Village Maternity                                      






The mother puts
          the newborn day
                     to her breast


turnips
         like skulls
                  are heaped
                               house high


before the blood has been washed
                            from the legs of the sky








                                                 John Berger  1976














.....  I am presently living with the collected poems of john berger




















....

intimidations of light and shadow

For Those In Hiding


In the far away dawn shadows
on the western side of the trees
what a fear there was
of the day now begun
with the arrival of the sun.


                   John Berger










.....

cognitive verbal blips...some say brain farts

                

It's  hard for some men to finish their sentances....   

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."




                  Robert Bly




















..

thinking: i recently held a 3 month old baby named Jayber

THE HOLD                                                                  


                        

There it is!  Just before putting out the light.
Here in the doorway to his room.
The unmistakable smell of him,
though his train pulled out an hour ago.
Not a child’s smell anymore, but a young man’s air
of college nights and long wool coats
and jokes so cool they cannot be explained.
You had to be there, Dad, he says.

Now in his scented wake I wait,
knowing he’ll soon be gone for good,
graduating to some new city,
paying too much rent.
And this room where for years he slept
and read, while brown hair broke through
on his face and chest… Soon
it will be a place for someone else to rest. 
But not quite yet.

This fragrant air is sweet to me
tonight. The dusty heat rising
from baseboard vents. The windows tight. 
His house-warmed high school books
upright in their case.
Like me, they’ve done their work.
What we instructors had to say
has all been said.  And what he took to heart
is as unfathomable now
as what he cast away.

For he’s moving on and on his own
to worlds he’ll live to see
but I will never fully know.  Of course
he’ll stop again to sleep and eat.
We’ll speak again of Charlemagne
and Russell Crowe.   But the being of him,
that second self housed for years
nearly inside my skin, is elsewhere
flowing on, flown.

How does a father live, I wonder.
But it’s late now.  At the stair
my wife is calling.  And so I remember
that morning my son was first handed to me,
still blood-smudged and birth-slippery.
And because I was a new father then
and because my inexperience showed
the midwife taught me how to hold a child properly.
Lightly now, she cautioned. 
But also pulling at my arms, testing me,
until I sensed what it meant
not to let go.




                               Charles Douthat




















.

lyrica interiorum

               CONSTANCE                                   






when i was pregnant, she told me
reaching back more than twenty years
for the memory


put sunflower seeds on my belly

 i used to read aloud to my son
so he could hear our bones


i love our voices, she said
chickadee & sparrow flutter down
lured by the seeds and undisturbed
by our voices


i put your hand on my belly
i invite you to read this aloud
i want to listen to our bones


& to love our voices, for a little while




                         Joanne Arnott   (  metis nation Canada  )














,