Cynergia: January 2011

Crow's Woe

Carol Kemp

A Crow placed before a mirror

Takes no note.

But if a spot of red is marked

Upon her peerless chest,

She’ll peck and preen and check to find

What injury has left.

She only sees herself in her

(Imagined) pain.

Then turns away, and seeks

Obscurity again.

Alders in the Fall: A Folderol

   No wonder these o’ercast climes to me appeal -
   My penchant for the dark, for black and grey.
   Oh, I’ll wear deep green or blue, and once, wore teal,
   But leaden skies are what I've donned each day, the
Self I have put on.

   And now today, not one week in my sixties,
   I walk these darkening woods in pleasant gloom.
   The days foreshortening, shadows cast, though ‘midst these
   Are trees like basking in a summer’s room, clear
Skies beyond.

   These alder leaves hold all the light of sunshine -
   Translucent golden beams against dark trunk.
   I covet color that was only once mine;
   I reel in wooded galaxies as if drunk:
   And smile, to watch the leaves fall
   One by one.

Prayer

Every pebble sacred,

And every leaf a temple.

Every breath of air the

first and last one.

Every spider's web

the linking of the cosmos;

and every drop of water

my salvation.

May I taste and breathe and hear and see

the holy weave of all creation.

The Final Gale

   Here is a secret
   impossible
   for youth to

   comprehend:

   How welcome is
   this faded, futile
   Self;
   How Beauty
   might be
   found
   in what
   Remains.

   No more the vital
   Stalk and promise;

   No more the burden
   of fragile fruit
   and its inevitable
   Fall.

   This
   is another thing -
   A relinquishing of
   Will,
   Release of roots
   and
   visage.

   Hear the ancients whisper:
   How imperceptibly
   Life passes;
   How welcome is
   the final
   Gale.

Compassion for a Derelict Deity

   If there were only one
   Palest pink porcelain
   Blossom

   I would fall to my
   Knees
   Each spring
   Cease
   All else to gaze at
   Such perfection.

   Instead,
   Profusion’s
   Its unfortunate
   Predilection,

   And after the first
   Sublimity I discover
   I cease to really see
   the Others:

   There are hundreds,
   but not really
   Any.

   And I cannot love
   them all there are
   So many.

The Shriek of the Diver

   Judith Burrows, photographer

   For a long time, she never told anyone.
   When people asked, which they sometimes
   did, she would go
   blank,
   cold air against her eyes,
   the direction of her gaze
   reverse,
   returning to the point where sound
   and thoughts stop.

   Entire years were lost that way.

   Later, she was able to say things like,
   I don't know what happened to her. I just
   never
   saw her again, or
   even sometimes...
   I think she died, a long time ago.

   Her brother says that years ago he went to
   see her, and that she was
   pathetic.
   But she doesn't believe he
   ever really found her.

   She knows that if the diver shrieks, he drowns.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Volcano: Cotopaxi in Morning Light

   I
   We do not see the volcano
   In the Garden of Eden,
   But it is always there.

   II
   I have been to the
   Volcano, as have
   You.

   III
   Sometimes the volcano
   Comes to us, its candent
   Orange fury our punishment.

   IV
   Or is it our reward:
   Its cruelest magma
   Birthing richest soil?

   V
   There is beauty in its merciless
   Path:
   Feral, as in causing death;
   Fertile, as in bearing life.

   VI
   I fear its power.
   It betrays us all.

   VII
   Who among us
   Is not betrayed?
   Has not betrayed, as well?
   Volcanoes themselves
   Are ducts
   For the Earth’s tears,
   Kepler cried.

   VIII
   If we live at the edge
   Of the volcano,
   Will we not be
   Destroyed?

   IX
   When we bring our cup of betrayals
   To its seething core, what do we destroy?

   X
   Where molten lava
   Has cooled,
   New growth blossoms.

   XI
   It is your Book of Blossoms,
   Attentive to nuance not yet known,
   the world needs to see.

   XII
   Sing the Beauty,
   And not the Betrayal.

   XIII
   Even if eruption is nigh.

A Poem, Acknowledging

   If goslings see this image moving left
   they do nothing, thinking it is their mother;
   to the right, they scatter, believing it is a hawk.

   That it cannot be distinguished,
   except for the direction in which it moves.

   That it is only in this movement,
   that we can know.

   That to the left takes us back, where
   each word has infinite possibility.

   That to the right, where we are always
   headed, leads to our end.

   That the literal preempts the possible.
   That the symbolic gives birth to all.

   That our deliverance at each end is
   to be feared and revered.

   That the agent of our deliverance is both
   beautiful and cruel.

   That both are always true.
   One and the same, eternally opposite.

   That we are goslings,
   and thus cannot know.

   That we must see the hawk

and know Mother.

If You Must Know

   "Solitary," by Sandy Chism

   If you must know,
   I may spend my life in this Arctic wilderness.
   I may cease to know the cycle of breath in, and
   breath out. Breath
   stops here, in this place, and
   thoughts are not liberated through speech.

   If you must know
   I may spend my life
   where what was and what might have been are no
   more than the sound of gunshot as the glacier gives birth,
   solitary, uncaring, not minding that
   the calf stays by her side, or no.

Couldn't Be No Boy

First off, they got those things,

wienies that when they get big can

hurt you, but little they just

so helpless and weak, look like

hadda be careful else they might get cut off, they do.

Then there's them rules, gotta fight go to them wars,

can't cry or you a sissy,

I be a sissy and no way they wanna be me

And other thing, gotta play sport, can't play no

dolls no house it gotta be sport can't just be

running and jumping and swinging those arms,

and can't forget, gotta win.

Lotta times win be

you kilt somethin'.

I allus feel bad even other side lose.

No, couldn't be no boy. Can't have babies, and can't cry,

gotta fight on the street or in them people's wars and always, gotta win gotta kill and

can't cry, gotta be a Man else

you a mama's boy,

and ain't nothin' worse.

Why She Didn't Believe in God

He was white, of course, but she knew what those

white men do, made no difference he was old, had

a long white beard, kinda like a old-fashioned grandpa

but she knew what grandpas do

Didn't help he had a temper, she knew

what happened when they got mad and out came that

belt

just like the thunder she knew he had up his sleeve in that long white robe

up there in heaven,

maybe

he loveth mercy, but he hadn't done nothin’

to help her, not nothin’ at all.

If he was like they said he was, why, she knew all about that.

And that nice boy of his, didn't make no sense he died for her

sins. Even she knew she

hadn't done

nothin’

wrong.

The Numbers, Monday Morning

   She stood behind the register
   at the gas station counter.
   Is it Robin's day off, I ask, and

   No, she replies, I’m the manager. I
   told Robin use your vacation before
   the end of the year, you can’t carry it
   over, I told her. Me, I'm not
   taking mine. My husband died 2
   weeks ago yesterday and I
   was back to work the next
   morning. It's okay – 28
   years I walk in this door, and 8,
   sometimes 10
   hours later leave it all behind;
   I’m fine. It's better to be here. My
   boys call; I look up at his urn -
   they won't stop worrying about me,
   I tell him.
   Still talk to him - 37
   years, a habit, I guess.
   Hard to stop.
   It was a massive heart attack, 3
   bypass surgeries. Still we thought
   he had another 5 or 6
   years left. Had a doctor's appointment the
   day of his death (that's how
   much we didn't expect it).
   62.

   Thank you, honey,
   that's 28 dollars and 59 cents.

   *****

   I had meant to write about how grey
   and cold the morning was, how I
   was late for work, then suddenly alert in
   that garish green and yellow station,
   how I couldn't place her vaguely foreign
   accent, how each respiration caught like
   some small, trapped bird, how I whispered
   Sorry (oh, useless word), and how I reached to
   hold her hand while an old man
   rubbed his palms together and moved slowly
   to the till.

   But then, that would have been a
   poem about me, and not about a woman
   I cannot name, and not about how numbers
   (oh, the numbers) framed her pain.

Something Always Unattainable

She has visited before, and she was

not a judgmental friend, but I use

the occasion to spend an entire day cleaning,

always with an eye to what someone other than

the lived-in eye might see, and thus gradually

it is transformed, this well-lived in house,

into the home I imagine at its best it might be.

Was it in honor of her, or myself, or the occasion,

I am not sure, perhaps just in honor of

something always unattainable

in this house with children busy trailing chaos,

and fir and cedar trees forever seeding.

She leaves, and with aching feet I wander

in and out of rooms whose order even

now is fleeting, merely a moment suspended

long enough to think It's done.

I find an errant spot on the dining room floor,

and licking my fingertips bend to rub it, dreamily,

until it's there no more.

Elk and Bear Rattle

By rush of brook and raucous caw of Crow

Elk stands listening,

listening for the snap of twig,

muffled grunt of Bear.

Lifetimes later I take its hide, hide of Elk and

scarred by claw,

stitching

shape of bear,

with sinew,

giving birth to Rattle.

In hallowed wood I shake the Rattle, sound of water, falling,

falling, look

into Elk's eyes and hear:

We must honor that which is most feared.

What we fear may offer our Salvation.

Bless this animal that its Death be not profaned, bereft of

higher purpose. May this blessing thus redeem its service.

Behind the Chicken Transport Truck

   It was the way they all sat,
   composed, dignified, serene;
   there must have been hundreds
   of them, transcendentally still, as if
   they were nesting, as if they were
   cradling something infinitely
   precious, only the occasional
   involuntary quiver of tawny wing
   among the truckloads of carefully stacked
   crates giving proof of their mortality.

   Bless you, I whispered, as I passed them,
   hurrying on my way to work.
   Forgive us.

   I like to think it made a difference,
   that they went to the conveyor belt in
   some meditative trance, recalling
   how soft the morning light was, or
   the dull clatter of dried corn
   scattered to the ground. I like to think their
   final moments were a willing offering up
   of their one brief life to the great unknown.

   But I know I am wrong.

Amira, at the Amusement Park

   I watch her ride
   the Ring of Fire,
   its hum in A-minor
   a chorus
   I did not hear until,
   of course,
   it was my own sweet girl
   riding that perilous sphere.

   At first I swell
   with fear, and then
   (a minor hymn to pain),
   I think, Well, Life's
   the Ring of Fire,
   and its hers, not mine,
   to reign.

   Then find myself
   quite joyful
   when she wants to ride,
   again.