—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Anonymous Photos of Nutty Squirrels
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT NUTS
In our oak villa, you,
our presiding squirrels,
scan grasses, hindquarter-stood,
for precious things. Or,
enacting tree-encircling swirls,
you listen frantic-eager
for light pings, grass-kissing
acorn plops. Lipped strenuously,
each chunk of leaf-fall heap-full bushel,
for you, lucky nutcatcher, props
jaw open. Rattler’s mouth,
fieldmouse buttocks distending
hypodermic-tipped gums, closest thing
to your achingly-held quiver
of seedload. Here is your
mouth-roof-straining burden, proof
one greenish nut’s enough, one
greenish nut’s a feast. You there, yes, you:
I saw you, jaw-juggler, stuff—two? could it be
three?—into cheek and cheek, pleased with
your greedy browse by the “instep arch”
of an oak. Just so you didn’t choke.
Life, richly stocked with acorn.
The November-mild sun, the upbark scramble,
the lush-life squirrel tannin-soused, all Strayhorn.
THE BREEZE YOU BROUGHT
You came back quick from down the hall, so that
The force of your return was whiff, breath, breeze.
You, unintending, conjured up the ease
I feel when, nuzzling, hungry Annie-cat
Insinuates need—and that fey flattery
I must construe as cat-love: Dad feeds her.
So pressed by a wind that freshened with allure
As you delivered a frisson fleet as glee,
How could I not decipher life in light
Of thoughts like words unseen till lemon comes
To stain the page inscribed with glass-clear ink
In terms of dark? I find no drops quite right
To reveal you, read you. Odd as thought that hums
Its notes least heard by him who strains to think.
SUNFLOWER WOMAN
Is it true I see you now as you truly are,
Young woman loving not just poetry,
But daylight? Standing at noon by your familiar,
The sunflower? Human faces may not be
Blind flower-disks laden with dark-bristling seed,
Yet you show in your upward look much trust
That cosmic rays will favor your great need
To ripen before rain comes, before rust
Corrodes even sunflowers’ petal-yellow edges.
Yet poet-potential and sun, synonymous
In you, are so richly, fragilely balanced that
You seem to teeter spring-summer as on a ledge.
How gracefully you tremble, how without fuss
You carry suspense as you wear your great big hat.
IN MEMORIAM PATRIC PEARSE (II)
The new piece [In Memoriam?] will be a happy dream, something like the mood I told you I wanted to do—Love and the farthest Irish seas mingled together.
—Arnold Bax, letter of 1916 to Harriet Cohen
It is a fresh new piece, and it sings of love,
but whose love? Gift, but where the receiving end?
Minor chords, a cothurnus tread and trend.
And a “mingling”—nation’s fate with lovers’ grove?
And where, if not in the sheer tempestuous tone,
are we to discern, as with red pen, sounds of the sea?
How often, when you depart, cloud-mystery,
have I misjudged your thoughts from your words alone?
Bax cannot, I’m certain, say for certain, This bar
connotes that pearl-gray cumulus painting skies
of Glencolumcille the same shade as its ocean…
That flare in the brass is as a half-drowned spar,
a mast, to mark sailors’ doom, raw destiny…
Yet she in him, you in me, mingled somehow—mind-motion.
RESTORING PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
(MOMA art conservator Diana Hartman, featured in the video, ”Microscopically reweaving a 1907 painting,” Aeon Magazine, 11/4/19)
The art restorer patiently rethreads
torn canvas on a classic work at MOMA.
The fabric, reattached to its framebed.
Would someone’s loving hand could piece the bled
soul’s fabric back to wholeness with her soma
—as art restorers patiently rethread.
Paula the uncomplaining has been bred
for this birth. Mortal artwork. Now, dark coma.
Fabric, slowly detached from home framebed.
What will her girl-child know then of the dread,
daughter’s life, mother’s art, slit short by trauma?
What art restorer’s patience can rethread
the sundered stitches when in childbed
presides no seamstress-artist-maid-and-mama?
Just try reattaching fabric to framebed.
Lost Paula’s painted hand holds flowerheads,
two fresh-plucked roses. Only primal Brahma’s
patience could re-suture all these threads
of earthly fabric torn from their framebed.
MEDICATING MILLAY
The accident determined everything.
The tumble from the car, roll down ravine.
From this point on, the Poetry could bring
No ease; not even Verse could intervene
As referee for warring pugilists,
Her mind in a shrunken corner, versus the drugs
Expanding their province to fit their big fists,
Swarming the lyric canvas with their bugs.
Nor candy nor liquor—both once quicker means
To summon inner Sappho—like fork tines
Can pierce morphine, Dilaudid, Nembutol.
Not Ragged Island, but Nurses’ Station, must call
her back from the pit, to write her clear serene:
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines…
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
_____________________
Thank you to merrymaker Tom Goff for adding his fine melodies to our holiday season! For up-coming poetry events in our area, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
—Medusa, who revels in chaos and the dancing stars it brings!
—Anonymous
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.