June 15, 2018 | Filed Under Poem for Hela | Comments Off on Daily Poem: Cinéma Vérité ~ Dorothy Walters
Cinéma Vérité
~ Dorothy Walters
This road is so fuzzy
it is sometimes hard to know
whether we are moving
or it is moving under us,
the scenery jerked along behind
like the sets of an old movie;
Time Passes.
Obviously, we are dressed for a journey.
The crude map is in our fist.
The air is heavy, like water,
Forms sometimes flash by like fishes,
too fast to tell whether they are
other travelers heading toward a common destination,
or aborted versions of ourself
that somehow floated free
in an earlier episode.
Before, there was sequence and measure,
A small fist unrolled to a recognizable hand,
blooded and veined,
Spring was to the right,
while on the left
snow crusted the curling branches,
winter always coming on.
Here, all things reflect each other,
The sun scorches the night sky.
The old man playing the organ in the country church
is also the girl strolling in the garden.
Mixed twins wander in circles overhead,
arm in arm,
but you cannot tell the female from the male.
Nearby, a body thuds heavily down,
a corpse imprinting the dust.
Instantly, a thousand roses spring from his brow.
You watch unmoved.
You cannot say if your composure
is the calm of acceptance of the mask of a dulled heart.
You move on,
muttering old benedictions
as you go.
June 14, 2018 | Filed Under Things I Think About | Comments Off on Odin’s Laundry
And today in “what does this dream mean?”:
In the dream, I was somewhere, indoors, with Odin, standing in front of what looked like a walk-in bathtub. It was actually a clothes washer, divided into two unequal sections. It was filling with water, so I quickly closed the doors so it wouldn’t overflow onto the stone floor.
I realized I was supposed to do Odin’s laundry, specifically, his shift and ionar. He was busy taking things off to be washed.
There was no instruction book, so I wasn’t sure if the two chambers were dual-wash, or if one was wash and one was rinse. The machine had some knobs and dials, but none of them were marked in any way.
I watched the machine as the two sections filled, trying to figure it out.
*end scene*
When I woke up, I was puzzled as to why I was supposed to wash Odin’s clothes. I don’t have a particularly close relationship with him in my practice, and this seems like a very intimate thing to do for someone.
It’s clear that there’s *something* I’m supposed to be doing for him. Now I just need to figure out what that is. Time to pull some runes and see what answers appear.
| Filed Under Poem for Hela | Comments Off on Daily Poem: An Answer to Another Persuading a Lady to Marriage ~ Katherine Phillips
An Answer to Another Persuading a Lady to Marriage
~ Katherine Phillips
Forbear, bold youth, all’s Heaven here,
And what you do aver,
To others, courtship may appear,
’Tis sacriledge to her.
She is a publick deity,
And were’t not very odd
She should depose her self to be
A pretty household god?
First make the sun in private shine,
And bid the world adieu,
That so he may his beams confine
In complement to you.
But if of that you do despair,
Think how you did amiss,
To strive to fix her beams which are
More bright and large than this.
June 13, 2018 | Filed Under Poem for Hela | Comments Off on Daily Poem: Talking to the Dead ~ Elaine Feinstein
Talking to the Dead
~ Elaine Feinstein
When was it you took up that second stick,
and began to walk like a cross country skier?
Your glide developed its own politics.
Last July, you were able to stretch over
like an acrobat, to oil the garden table.
The patio faced south. It was high summer.
Coffee and grapefruit was the breakfast ritual,
or boiled eggs eaten from blue terracotta.
Our paradise, you called it, like a gite
we might have chosen somewhere in Provence.
Neither of us understood you were in danger.
Not even when we called the ambulance:
you’d been inside so many hospitals,
ticking your menus, shrugging off jabs and scans
talking unstoppably to visitors –
your long crippling made you bitterly clever.
Humped on your atoll, and awash with papers
you often argued like an angry man.
This time, however, you were strangely gentle.
Your face lit up as soon as I arrived;
smiling, you shooed the nurses out, and said
Now go away, I’m talking to my wife.
You liked it, when I brought myself to say
seeing you was the high point of my day.
The nurses, pushed for time, hauled you about
and fixed the bed without much ceremony.
You spoke of home, as if you were ET,
and wanted me to fetch you in the car – as
I would have, if the staff nurse had concurred.
Darling, they brought you in like a broken bird.
Your shoulder blades were sharp beneath your skin,
a high cheekbone poignant against the pillow.
Yet neither of us spoke a word of death.
My love, you whispered, I feel so safe with you.
That Monday, while I phoned, you waited loyally
for my return, before your last breath.
June 12, 2018 | Filed Under Poem for Hela | Comments Off on Daily Poem: The Blue Scarf ~ Amy Lowell
The Blue Scarf
~ Amy Lowell
Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded
In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, it lies there,
Warm from a woman’s soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing.
Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her lingers and drugs me.
A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down on my face,
And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim in cool-tinted heavens.
Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement.
Rose-leaves blow and patter against it. Below the stone steps a lute tinkles.
A jar of green jade throws its shadow half over the floor. A big-bellied
Frog hops through the sunlight, and plops in the gold-bubbled water of a basin,
Sunk in the black and white marble. The west wind has lifted a scarf
On the seat close beside me; the blue of it is a violent outrage of colour.
She draws it more closely about her, and it ripples beneath her slight stirring.
Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel
Hard and white, a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to a handful of cinders,
And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine.
How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!
