Welcome are the passionately curious

"There was one Elephant--a new Elephant--an Elephant's Child--who was full of 'satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. And he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his 'satiable curiosities." Rudyard Kipling

Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Southern Thing

I didn’t understand my Southern self
Until I moved to South Dakota—I
Was just thirteen, then. I was—you might say—
A novelty. Very nice, that. It gave me
A sense of place in being out of place.
Years later, at that college—How was I
To know there was guilt being Southern, that
A limit on my social standing—mind
So filled with culture notwithstanding. I
Did try to change, to smooth my talk, to make
Straight my meandering speech. Lost the cause.
My heart was cheered by my kind friend—he said
I was quite different from the rednecks,
Hillbillies, “good ole’ boys.” I did believe
Him. Got used to my rambling cadence, thought
I was okay to walk about and talk
In good society—You understand,
I think, now, why when she said, “I’m glad
I’m not a Southerner,” what I heard was,
“I’m glad I’m not like you.”

[This poem hurt to write more than I thought it would.]

Whiter Shades of Irony [*this fledgling is new]

For a color that is the triune of all color,
For all the implied simplicity and forthrightness,
White is an unholy terror for matching.
the worst kind of duplicity—
the pure one, so called,
is just like the rest—for who is to say
your Snow White is not my silver lining;
your crisp white paper, the haggard chalk in my hand.
Quirky, naming a dark grey shade of paint “Honest Abe,”
Naming a very white-grey shade “Edge of Night”
without even waiting for a respectable
smidgeon
of sunset.

Just like the black in your foulest nightmare--
It's just “Charcoal Grey” to the make-up industry,
Really.

Edits of previously posted poems--nothing brand new, yet.

Sestina for my Charlotte
Had tea with Charlotte Brontë last week, in wonder at the gold and crimson
rosebud tea service. First thought her a lady of simple tastes, a plain, glass-
like figurine bent over a desk. Silly to forget about the white-hot ember
in her soul, smoldered under gazes of Ms. Ingrams and Reeds. Then, the shimmer
of the black ink, in Jane Eyre’s sketches and Lucy Snowe’s love, lights that haunt
ballrooms perused from a corner. Naturally she drinks beauty from beauty, paper

and pen in hand, analysing her works and mine—my paper
covered with double-spaced seedlings, dandelions aspiring to be crimson
roses. Teatime, then—I by the fire and Charlotte in her usual haunt,
the window seat. “You seem fond,” she said, sketching runes on the frosted glass
with her fingernail, “of the idea of flight. Intriguing.” I watched the shimmer
and flicker of the fire on my teacup. “Thank you,” I said, watching ember

fade from orange to red-black, “But tell me your secrets, things I’ll remember
coming from you, not a dead-leafed textbook. How do I make words, pencil, and paper
sing a nocturne? Or use black and white to paint the shimmer
of stars, like you can? Or make a strobing cursor transfuse crimson
and gold thoughts to cleanse rust from the soul?” Turning from the glass,
she motioned me beside her. “Don’t confine yourself to the familiar haunt,

over-plucking from sedate experience. Seek pastures new: watch and haunt
the whole world. Study your fellowmen, reading their characters by the ember
of their eyes. Before gathering the fragments, study the beauty of broken glass—
And do not shun the books! They are not mere dead leaves of paper
bound in thread and cloth! Walk their orchards and partake of what crimson
fruits you can find amid the leaves. Study and mirror the shimmer

of a sparrow’s feathers—yes, a sparrow.” She paused, glazed in the shimmer
of pale sun through the frosted panes. “But,” she resumed, “doubts still haunt
your eyes—what? Do you aspire to fame? Desire glory and crimson
roses strewn at your feet?” I swirled the tea in my cup and stared at the ember
in the hearth. “Yes. That is one thing I want,” I replied. “Then do not take up paper
and pen. Conquer all with fear and the sword,” she said. “Yes, the world will raise its glass

to you, and you will have blood red roses enough. Hear me: don’t desire that glass
pedestal. If,” she said, “you achieve lasting fame for the dance and shimmer
of your words, well enough. But if you wish to write well, know your paper
and pen are not for your blessing alone—no, be willing to be alone, a haunt
savoring life, for good and bad, and transcribing it so that none can help but remember.
Be unknown, but write well those runes in gold and crimson.”

Her apparition melts away into cold glass, and I am here, a pale haunt
alone in my bedroom, amid the shimmer of a white mid-December,
staring at digital paper, and the clock proclaims 11:45 PM in crimson.

Edifice
Rosy-red doorstep and door—
the kitchen, living room,
and second-story window
shutters darker than the house,
a creamy cast—
and a sleek, dark-thatched widow’s peak roof.
Purple flowers
and glittering rocks
tucked here and there,
gracing the lawn.

That tall black iron ivy-drowned fence unbalanced
the house,
gate thrown wide
On its own terms.

The strange little brass doorknob
never upright—
perpetually Cheshire-cat grinned.

If the gate was open and we knocked on the door,
the intercom crackled

How sweet to stop by to see me!
I’m doing well, ever so well—
Sorry, can’t come down, so busy!
and off we were hustled, the flowers itching at our noses
and the gate closing
Ever so noiselessly.

Just after dusk I saw
shadows behind the windows,
But the panes spied me and down the brown curtains went.
Next day the gate was locked.
I gave it a gentle push
but it pinched my hand.
I blamed the tenant
and the rest of us whispered the ammunition.

We so expertly ignored the house
that we didn’t find out
‘til days later
the windows had closed the lights
and the house had blown itself away.
Red door shards flecked the flowers
and the Cheshire-cat doorknob
had disappeared.

What’s a Poem?
Trouble pixies you yell at to make sense
But they tango and tangle and dangle
Their black-and-white stocking feet
Over the book-edge, laughing up their sleeves
And waft up to pinch your ears ‘til you cry

Stop yelling.

Share your tea with them

They might perch on your mug handle,
Brush up a da Vinci
or van Gogh with their black-and-white fingertips
The flush of their wings might strum Beethoven
or Zimmer in your ears

Set them on the nose-bridge of your specs
Or let them curl up in your ear

Take them for a walk—
What? you think they enjoy
Sitting in their cloth, string, and paper cages?
All day tugging at the dog-eared pages,
memorizing backwards the forward by
a creaking critic who forgot to believe in fairies. 

Billy Collins, during your “August in Paris,”
No, I was not hiding away at all
when you aimed and fired your Ballistics at me
As a matter of fact, I had just had a long tête-à-tête
with a moment’s reflection of a handsome boy
Then maintained firm steady eye-contact
with a loquacious tray on the airplane,
Nodding agreeably at the clouds as they chimed in
And walked a mile in my own shoes before
I made accusations against my rotund torso.
No. I was not hiding at all.


The Wild, the Free, like Waves that Follow o’er the Sea

“Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on."
—Lord Byron, from Mazeppa

Something I love about the make of a Horse
When the Wild thing whispers by--
How Earth formed muscle, bone, and heart,
Water rushed beneath his skin,
Fire consumed his eyes,
And when all was done and seen good,
Wind roared, "Stare back into my eye! Dare!"
Horse laughed
And danced away on Shadow in a whisper of mist.