THE BLACKEST KETTLE
I am the blackest kettle
that you hold, boiling,
pouring for me a cup of tea
when we have become the grown old.
And in the kitchen where we sit
our hearts turned out and set aside
we will cook to fill the table.
Because the wise dine slowly,
on a terrace weathered with wooden chairs.
Summer salads, our friends arrive,
I pass the bread, you pass the wine,
Each soft and white.
Then nothing will be unspoken.
I am the linen cloth
playing with the breeze in the night.
Gently you laugh and smooth me down.
More worn, your hands
still make quick work and understand
the best move to play
in the future when we are all
part of that perfect machine,
which smiles long through dinner,
conversation, cards, and into dawn.
That never stammers, never fails.
But now I hate to be young.
I hate to be many things.
Because when I am a hammer
even you look like a nail.
this guy explains how he bound his own books, a handy little reference. perhaps i will have to make time to do a printing of the revised version of my book which you have never read: a child's dream.
Lying on the couch, my arm packed in ice,
Lying on the couch, my arm packed in ice,
My parents are eating meatloaf.
My parents are eating meatloaf.
[thanks boing boing]
i am perpetuating this meme which i caught from meta. the point is to write down ten opening lines of books and see if you can guess them. so, cmon, guess. to be fair [fair?], i did not include any poetry :]
the answers are hidden in white in the extended version...
i was suffering from a sort of writer's block since last june when i left for switzerland. more accurately, it was writer's low self-esteem. everything i wrote was crap. unfinished crap at that. but i buckled down and finished my first poem in 9 months. it was almost as satisfying as giving birth [or so i've heard]. coincidentally, it was a birthday gift to someone, but as poetry is the gift that keeps on giving, i can share it with all of you too. and p.s. the rest of my collected works currently reside here until their new home is finished.
LACEMAKER
Your art is dying.
All of the dust of the air
is there burning under your delicate smile
while you make what is dying, slowly
tying each knot like a ghost weaver.
Rolling the thread between
your fingers--time
is thinner, finer,
a lingering smell of thick vanilla lace.
Your hand to your lips, remembers
the ache of each tiny victory
and slow caressed symphony,
hands dripping like honey across
everything, across anything but
Yes you are a dead art, slowly being born.
