Heart's Blood & Wistaria Blossoms

BLAME
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

Don’t call it global warming; it’s the hand
of God, not man. It’s hurricane and flood
that devastate our people and our land.
Don’t call it global warming. It’s the hand
that plucks the April fragrance from a bud
and flings it on disaster’s empty sand.
Don’t call it global warming. It’s the hand
of God, not man, makes hurricane and flood.

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Thanks, TG. Click on the "Comments" line at the bottom of yesterday's Medusa to see info about next Tuesday night's SPC benefit for the victims of Katrina. And keep sending your poems about it—or about anything, actually...

Had some responses (TG was the first) to the "identify the poem and the poet" contest yesterday; while you're looking at yesterday's post, check out those mysterious lines of poetry and see if you can get yourself a free copy of Ron Tranquilla's An Ocean-Front Hotel Room—our Labor Day contest.

Snake 7 is on the cusp of done; copies should start appearing this week.

More Amy Lowell, who was quite A Woman of Substance, in both the mental and the physical sense. A critic once said that one would think such a large woman would not have sexual feelings—a comment for which he has gone down in history, the poor, misguided twit... Here are some of her "blood" poems, a favorite image:


IN TIME OF WAR

Across the newly-plastered wall,
The darting of red dragonflies
Is like the shooting
Of blood-tipped arrows.


GRANADILLA

I cut myself upon the thought of you
And yet I come back to it again and again.
A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out
From the dimness of the present
And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.
Then, going obviously to inhale their frangrance,
I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,
And only when the blood runs out across my fingers
Am I at all satisfied.


ABSENCE

My cup is empty tonight,
Cold and dry are its sides,
Chilled by the wind from the open window.
Empty and void, it sparkles while in the moonlight.
The moon is filled with the strange scent
Of wistaria blossoms.
They stray in the moon's radiance
And tap against the wall.
But the cup of my heart is still,
And cold, and empty.

When you come, it brims
Red and trembling with blood,
Heart's blood for your drinking;
To fill your mouth with love
And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul.

______________________

Thanks, Amy—wherever you are.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.