Watering a Stony Place

XII (from The North Ship)
—Philip Larkin

Like the train's beat
Swift language flutters the lips
Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat.
The swinging and narrowing sun
Lights her eyelashes, shapes
Her sharp vivacity of bone.
Hair, wild and controlled, runs back:
And gestures like these English oaks
Flash past the windows of her foreign talk.

The train runs on through wilderness
Of cities. Still the hammered miles
Diversify behind her face.
And all humanity of interest
Before her angled beauty falls,
As whorling notes are pressed
In a bird's throat, issuing meaningless
Through written skies; a voice
Watering a stony place.

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Snake 9 has emerged from hibernation; he made his shameless appearance at two readings last night: Hidden Passage in Placerville, and Poems-For-All in Sacramento. Rachel Hansen took a fistful for The Book Collector; they should be there today. If you are a contributor to this issue or a subscriber, books will go into the mail this week and next in batches as they roll off the presses. Stay tuned...

Meanwhile, Cynthia Bryant, Pleasanton Poet Laureate and mistress of the Poet's Lane cybersite lists the following intriguing pages on her site:

•••Poet’s Lane is accepting poems for April (under the New Year Poems) with multi-themes of Fools, Child Abuse, Earth Day and Poems about Poetry. Please include your name, your picture and any credits with the poem and say it is for April poems.

•••Poet’s Lane has added a new page called “Get it Off Your Chest” Mental Health Poems, so if you have some poem that fits a rant/blast of “I am mad as Hell and…” or “I just don’t get it” send those poems, include name and your picture—and remember to say which page it is for.

•••Send your poetry venue pictures to shares with other poets on our Poetry in Motion page; please include people’s names and where the pictures are taken.

•••Take this opportunity to have your face/bio and contact information available to folks who want to know about you; I will post you on Poets in the Know.

•••If you have poetry related e-zine, group or publishing for poetry, send your link and information to me and I will post you on the Links page.

•••If you have a special thing going on that uses poetry to help the community, I will gladly post it on my site under Special Poetry Related page.

Send to PoetsLane@comcast.net. Check us out at www.poetslane.com

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•••Thursday (3/23), Poetry Unplugged features Crawdad Nelson at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sac., 8 pm. Free. Info: 916-441-3931. Currently the proprietor of Flyway Press, Crawdad has long been a publisher, poet and journalist, both in Sacramento and on the northern coast.

David Humphreys was inspired by Rhony Bhopla's "Ions" poem [posted here on 3/21] and by Bliss, her anthology of erotic poems by other poets—inspired enough to send us a poem of his own:

WHAT PLANET
—David Humphreys, Stockton

Sedna is about three-fourths the size of Pluto.
The Inuit goddess Sedna rules over the seas

and the Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region
past the orbit of Neptune extending roughly

from 30 to 50 AU. In 1950 Jan Oort observed
that no comet had been observed with an orbit

to indicate that it came from interstellar space.
There is a strong tendency for aphelia of long

period comet orbits to lie at a distance of about
50,000 AU, and there is no preferential direction

from which comets come. This being the case,
midnight's galaxy spills back to dusk shimmering

a vortex vector gradient as she smells the rose ripple
scent swoon and takes his strength upon her very nipple.

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Thanks, David! More now from Philip Larkin:

XIII (from The North Ship)
—Philip Larkin

I put my mouth
Close to running water:
Flow north, flow south,
It will not matter,
It is not love you will find.

I told the wind:
It took away my words:
It is not love you will find,
Only the bright-tongued birds,
Only a moon with no home.

It is not love you will find:
You have no limbs
Crying for stillness, you have no mind
Trembling with seraphim,
You have no death to come.

____________________

—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. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)