Six Thirteen Fourteen

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Six Thirteen Fourteen (Honey Moon)

The sagging bottom of the sky tears on the mountain
and the gray spilling down ten miles away eventually

obscures the entire ridgeline. I’m out here to see the first
full moon rising on a Friday the thirteenth in June

in a hundred years, and now the horizon is missing.
In the highest branches of the old walnut tree

the leaves are flinging the last rays of sun away
with such chaotic gusto I can’t tell where the wind

is coming from. Closer to the ground the silver maple
holds its leaves out completely level, motionless

as if confirming that, somewhere, here for
the moment anyway, all is calm. The mist arrives

on slender legs ten minutes later, apologetically calm
and thinning the distance: the mountains have moved closer

like how a memory of someone far away suddenly appears
as a thing you want to climb, or a barrier on the path.

And still there is no moon. In bed before midnight
I feel a sudden rush of love for you

as if I myself had just broken through life’s haze,
glowing and spherical, irreducible, reaching without

fail. While the most I see out my window later
is a wedge of pure light through the shifting clouds

I will remember that moon and who I was suddenly,
how love shone off me from light’s source.

Rained Out

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Rained Out

I never swore I would not write a softball poem!
Darkness strides down the high hill towards the field.

Taking its time so the mist beneath it can depend
like a hanging plant, motionless every time you look.

I turn away to watch the game but something taps my shoulder–
the first drops of rain. People are running for their cars

With their softball gloves on their heads. Though it lasts
only five minutes, the rain turns the red clay infield

Into a giant thumb print of the storm. The umpire
examines it like a tired detective then calls it a night.

Unaffected as true fans, the bluebirds whir and swerve
across the outfield, shagging flies.

Driftwood Days

19 Replies

Driftwood Days

The sea has examined me into this shape
I have come so far only because of what is left

How can I not accept it gratefully how can you not
if the entire sea can do it I would say give it a try

I do not have the power to observe you into love
but something of us both has been examined

Wave by wave into a lean slightness no vessel
because it goes all directions at once having come so far

with its hollows and whorls soothing to the waves
no difference between inside and outside

It no longer matters what is missing it never did it turns
out it was always this floating thing and never that

Evening Sky

101 Replies

Liz Doyle

Evening Sky

from a painting by Liz Doyle and a photo by Ann Koplow

Night had already begun to hug the lowlands
when his back to the pale faces of the outbuildings

their remnant glow against the forgetting day
I thought I saw Turner out there

tying himself to a piece of sky shadow
to ride out the violent vault into night

A mile up the day was still swirling
like love thundering in the chest well after

the details have been lost still Turner
tearing clouds with his brush into the idea

of clouds wonders if he’s leaving
something out he’s never believed

the details mattered although they meant
all the moment could form into and change

From the cumulonimbus he sees an old man
preparing a thatch hut against the wind

And a town lobbing light into the sky
The man’s thoughts are fireworks reflected

In the village fountain and to Turner who feels
the clouds free him who feels he let go first

the fireworks in the fountain some times
are clearer than the fireworks in the sky

Ann Koplow

Moonless Night, Wondering

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Moonless Night, Wondering

Like an important moment slid on its edge
or a memory blocked mostly by the dark present

Something seeming to shine as it descends
but not shining really but reflecting instead

this larger brilliance from the other direction
entirely and not descending but circling

as love circles and predators circle and
the confused prey circles and for all that

knowledge still it is the moon setting
over a local hill in early evening before

the first firefly I have seen all spring
lights up in my room on this moonless night

St Brigid Press on Public Radio!

Small Sea Monster

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Small Sea Monster

from a sculpture by Severo Calzetta da Ravenna

The sea monster of 16^th century Italian origin
looks in bronze like a freak show dog with scales

and a half human face. Its webbed hands arched
delicately like a lawyer’s on a witness stand just before

cross examination. A tail that could be a dinner bell.
Coming up for air from another dream of drowning

I think the tiny dog standing on my chest looks more sea
monsterly, and I wonder if I’m exchanging

one depth for a murkier other, of waking.
it’s only at the surface that we’re surprised

by what breaks through, in the shallows
that things get stranded between tides

like this hideous thought splishing about
that in the deep would be graceful, near invisible, at home.

Self Portrait at Forty Nine

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Self Portrait at Forty Nine

Even in a small town there is a sound arriving
through the silence like the breath of the tiger

hidden in every house. Asking how can something hidden
arrive, finally, to the place it’s always been?

Nevertheless there is no standing on reason
for that is the mystery I hear in the silence

before the house wakes, when the train sound slides
away and the bells of competing churches hollow

out to the thinnest reminder of passages time turned
away from to linger on a single guitar chord,

from this open window, now long gone, hours
later, as I lay in bed and when the entire neighborhood

is between breaths I hear this breath, this sound
arriving to the place it’s always been. Earlier today

my neighbor dug up with his bare hands four solid
concrete steps leading from the curb to the space

between our houses. As if there was an invisible
house there all along, and in absence of anything

but a passage all we can do is wait to see
who owns it, or who will come visiting

in the silence, or if the sound arriving is simply
the door we cannot yet see, not yet open.

no sea here: breathe

7 Replies

Dana Martin is among my favorite poets, on or off WordPress. She has been posting a poem or two each week from her book “No Sea Here,” and while I regularly find something remarkable in each of her poems, I liked this one so much I formally petitioned the poet to change the title of her collection to reflect this beautiful, compassionate and disconcerting poem.

Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

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Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

Weightless, local, essence of form but in no form
that keeps, these clouds block my view of the one

thing we can both look at tonight and know we share
the same world. It is not enough to know it’s there—

I must know that I see what you see. But if clouds,
empty of all illusion of form or permanence,

absorb their share of the moon’s glancing light
then maybe this love, shorn of time and setting

and shape, is equally bright and worthy
whether we see the moon or not

Translations from the English

The one who has arrived has a long way to go. –Tomas Transtromer

Six Thirteen Fourteen

Six Thirteen Fourteen (Honey Moon)

Rained Out

Rained Out

Driftwood Days

Driftwood Days

Evening Sky

Evening Sky

Moonless Night, Wondering

Moonless Night, Wondering

St Brigid Press on Public Radio!

Small Sea Monster

Small Sea Monster

Self Portrait at Forty Nine

Self Portrait at Forty Nine

no sea here: breathe

Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

Six Thirteen Fourteen (Honey Moon)

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Rained Out

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Driftwood Days

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Evening Sky

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Moonless Night, Wondering

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Small Sea Monster

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Self Portrait at Forty Nine

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Another Full Moon Night, Under Clouds

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