Poetry

SEASON *

Youth and love unite beneath the power

of velvet skin and dark, half-sleeping eyes.

Spring seems to last forever to the flower

that feels the rush of chlorophyll's green rise.

Time is not—cannot be of the essence

when second hands are slow, standing still,

while all around the sun is streaming gold.

The thought of end, of beauty's obsolescence,

seems unreasonable and cannot hold

as long as love is dressed in daffodil.

Youth never sees itself or has a reason

to know that it has no infinity.

It turns, like Spring, a sweet, unknowing season,

never doubting its divinity.

But as in Fall trees look down on their leaves

that once had been too much a part to see,

powerless to reconstitute the whole;

so age sees fallen beauties and it grieves

the unclothing of the lonely soul

that, now in rags, goes begging tree to tree.

( First Prize Raintown Review Poetry Contest 2001)

SEER*

     I dreamed you were a murderer

     and all the summer air

     could not unblacken what you were

     or make the body fair;

     for what you killed was love itself,

     its light and aching breath,

     and though its limbs with studied grace

     still moved, the dance was death.

     (Published in Plains Poetry Journal)

SOMETIMES I THINK

Sometimes I think that, once upon a time,

there was a you meant only for a me,

that what I saw in you, essential, sublime,

was all there was or would ever be.

It wasn't hard to love your boyish charm

or the sadness of what your life had been,

but a soul, unfairly, can disarm

and blind true love to what else lies within.

If, perhaps, I had been a saint

my vision would have burned away the rust

that clung to spirit. But I was too faint

to love that long. The fairy tale is dust,

but like all tales began with something true:

I loved, a moment, something good in you.

(Published in Romantics Quarterly)

                 TABULA RASA*

       What is this sad and alien world

          into which they've come,

          with field and sky unclean, and darkened sea?

       With a flag of plague unfurled

          and slowly beating drum,

          the shrinking earth disputes eternity.

       Yet, like flowers, children grow

          beneath the finite shade,

          and every leaf they touch they consecrate.

       They rise and stretch their arms to show

          how beautifully they're made,

          and turn the world into a virgin slate.

(Published in Romantics Quarterly)

BLACK MAGIC

        There is black magic in a photograph.

        We stare through smoke and think a contact made.

        So strong the sense of flesh and life displayed

we watch a smile condensing from a laugh.

        An instant so completely fresh and sealed

        is like a pause between beats of a heart—

for flowing blood, a solid, resting form.

        And like a message rolled across a field

        of sudden void just before a storm,

it proves life's quiet holds its greatest art.

(Published in Songs of Innocence)

BLOCKS

You build with blocks, and thoroughfares

have elegant parquet, the portals

rise up to rest smooth walls and stairs.

Of gods’ revenge on lovely mortals

in lands of white built on an isle

of dreams, starward from sea below,

you can’t have heard in your short time;

and yet, your little people climb

up to the top in single file

and cry out: No! No! No!

GIANTS

It is, some say, a wasteful shame to live

among the giants, dead as they are tall,

to pour bright dreams into a silver sieve

and watch them turn to powder as they fall.

How tiring to always think of up,

and strain to suck a thin and deadly air.

How sad, inviting Mr. Keats to sup,

and have him act as if you were not there.

Still, colossal minds will not erase,

their wakeful eyes tracing graceful lines

of jeweled planets spun in endless space

according to inevitable design.

And I, for one, think it far less sweet

to triumph small than fail at giants' feet.

                    (Published in Sparrow)

ONE MIDNIGHT

I left my house because you were not there

and every light was burning to bring back

your face, so calm, your dark and gleaming hair,

but when I turned to see you, all was black.

I left to seek you in the midnight sky

that knew your beauties, counting star by star.

I could not breathe for feeling you close by,

but turned to see the sky grown cold and far.

The fields brushed evening’s wet against my feet

and distant mountains held still pools of light.

I heard you call. The air grew thick and sweet.

I wandered after you into the night.

But only birds called back from bending trees

that blended into dawn’s first golden red.

The grass was soft. I rested on my knees

beside a stream, and knew that I was dead.

And in my loneliness I cupped my hand

to drink of earth’s cool water one last time.

But as I bent to drink the air was fanned

with spice which made the water’s taste sublime.

I looked into the water’s stirring face

and saw a light that changed what I had been,

leaving you forever in my place,

and giving me, with love, my life again.

(published in Carnelian)

REVERIE

I walked beside the ocean in a dream

and watched it swell and shrink and part and merge,

and slide from oxide green to yellow-grey,

opaque, then shot with light where golden fish

were caught a moment, in uncertainty

that reddened gold and bronzed their stippled orange

before they blackened back to sea again,

leaving me to wonder what I'd seen,

or if I'd seen at all. A hundred clouds

in shifting shapes, white with silver edges,

turning, rolling into clay-like fields

of umber, almost black, and burnt sienna,

crossed high above the water with such speed

I could imagine purpose to their flight.

But purpose, plans, and hope were human things,

and I, beside the water, by myself,

could think of nothing future, nothing past,

but only light that scattered on the sand,

so filled with salt, with remnants of what was—

a brick-red crab, an empty pink-lined shell,

an oyster left without the glistening pearl

that made us think it beautiful and worth

our measured human touch. The tender spray

of so much life against my face grew warm,

so like a kiss, so like the first embrace,

the very first when love was only joy

of rising froth and upward-spilling light;

a light connecting life to other life

to let the spirit wake and know itself,

and let it play among all living things,

to move and grow and shift and touch the world,

changing it with subtle water motion

that pulled on every thought ; to let it feel

the rush of pain and pleasure's slow sweet rise,

the shock of brilliant reds,the strange pefumes,

that lured the mind into silent woods

where every breath was felt, and every pulse

of blood was known within the heart itself;

to let it find, in the changing shape

of living , its own perfect changelessness;

to let it live, and let it then sink back

into the shining black of hidden depths

where spirits moved like unseeing fish,

not knowing of their selves, not of the sea,

sealed in darkness, never knowing light,

or life itself. I felt the water rise,

as if to wash humanity away

with blinding foam, too much to feel and see—

and so I woke.

The dream was not of you.

I never thought of you or longed at all

to see your figure standing, looking out,

gold against the green of churning waves.

The dream was not of you, but when I woke

your face appeared and filled the aching hollow

the sea had carved so deep into my heart,

still red with life, before it ebbed away.

(published in Romantics Quarterly)

Poet Les Merton in collaboration with The Moontones.

SEASON	SEER	SOMETIMES I THINK
TABULA RASA	BLACK MAGIC	BLOCKS
GIANTS	ONE MIDNIGHT	REVERIE