NOWHERE DOES IT MENTION LOVE
It is such a night as this night, and such a dream
as this one dreams—anonymous among the
sleepers, rags at the windows, whispers
under the doors; he holds no pain—
the pain has died; he tells himself
this and believes it.
~
She is in her own shadow of necessity.
She lies under the white moonlight of
her mirror and lets herself be soothed
by the goddess of sleep; the ancient
fairy tales in the dreams of the child;
the sacred promise of her own to keep.
~
This night is forsaken unto its long delusion :
figures hold each other in rooms that continue
down the narrowing halls—figures unbeautiful
and old—figures eloquent with pity and with need.
In this journal of night, nowhere does it mention love.
IN THE MIND OF
All night they struggle through the forest,
two creatures from the tale of woe,
doomed to create an ancient story
from myth to moral—she
being borne on the back of a handsome beast
who would protect her from the evil that
lurks at the edge of fairy tales,
not yet written.
THE ALBINO NIGHTINGALE
(After “No Swan So Fine” by Marianne Moore)
Made of pure light, sent from imagina-
tion’s land, straight out of childhood’s
fairy tales—a nightingale of course, in
a silver cage, with an open door to test
its loyalty—mind’s albino nightingale
that preens, and sings, and struts for
the emperor whose ownership proves
vulnerable with mind-sweet trill.
I hear it still—all the way
from then to here.
_____________________
FROM THE BOOK OF ANIMAL TALES
by Arthur Rackham
Framed within a likened border—
a convergence—Old White Owl
in a huddle of listeners
and fidgeters—
something is being
revealed—
apprehension builds . . .
a worried tremble of wings . . .
Rooster knows
and Parrot knows,
Duck and Pelican know, as does
hulking old vulture and
Wee
Sparrow—
Old White Owl, in all his
pomp and seriousness, has told them.
THE BOOK OF FAIRY TALES
What can we boast about now in our
new vagrancy. Not that we are lost,
but that we’re in a whorl of memory,
such stridings against a tide
of reason—resources now—
now that we’re wise.
There were two of us,
against the grain,
always seeking
over each other’s shoulder
for the truth, or reason
needed for existence in the chaos—
another word to use
for explanation.
It was the fairy tale we quarreled over,
whether it was real or metaphor.
You chose real.
I was sorrow to the core.
It was the words we entered, lit by
imagination for an ending—not this,
not this actual losing of each other
before all the pages were turned.
NEVER AS NOW
What’s never is now, what’s the use
of hiding—it will out, as in will in.
Heavy with doubt, we re-assess.
Excuses—ever what we use.
Why confuse this
with fact.
Fact is an act.
Act 1. Done.
Pure nonsense?
How pure?
Mix this with that
and drink slowly.
In a hurry, she asks?
Here is only here.
Elsewhere is nowhere.
Here is still here—period.
Spinning. A gold child in the center of
her spin. Look. She is happy. She can spin.
SHE “CAN CANS” INTO HEAVEN
(For My Mother)
She’s onstage among the dancers, twirling her
skirts, her legs, in her flirty “can can” steps—
a bit risqué, a bit tipsy, a bit too old.
That can’t be right. She’s up there
dancing to a swirl of scribbled energy,
her laughing face caught for a moment
in detail as she circles and circles her feet
and laughs. The frenzied music
can’t keep up and makes no further sound.
There’s only silence keeping time between
the two realities. In a last defiance she leaps
from her shadow. It lets go. This time
she rides the pages out in a frazzle of light
becoming a chorus-line of one—
so complex with abandon
that this lone, admiring eye
can’t follow her—life’s naughty darling,
becoming such a blur.
______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
THE OLD ILLEGIBILITY OF TIME
—Joyce Odam
It was difficult enough
to want back
what we remembered—
so clear—
like a newly sharpened
pencil,
the dark lead
gliding easily
over swift thoughts,
though they blurred later
with the old illegibility
of time, fading back as usual.
________________________
Happy half-way through December, and a big thank-you to Joyce Odam for her artwork and riffs upon our Seed of the Week: Those Naughty Elves—well, elves of all sorts, clogging up our drainage pipes and messing with the mail.
Our new Seed of the Week is “Shopping”. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.
For more about Moore's "No Swan So Fine," go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=19821 OR mgerardmingo.com/2019/01/05/marianne-moore-analysis/.
________________________
—Medusa
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
