It's summer, season of memories, deep emotion, and stirring
metaphors of growth and decay. In the June issue of Verse-Virtual Poets offer fresh views of the way things are and on the realization that they're not necessarily the way we wish them to be. "He saw again his professor marched
from the hospital and summarily executed
for refusing to cut off the ears of prisoners.
He sees again the long lines of amputees,
a tidal flow of faces filled with desolation and hope.
They have come to him as their miracle worker.
He has a vision of the marketplace,
the smoke, stench, blood, litter,
groans, screaming and death."
To quote another apocalyptic voice: "Everybody's
having them dreams."
In
Joan Mazza's two beautifully moving poems I sensed something of the response of
many of us to the challenges of Covid Time. Her "Telephone to Another
World" gives one of those sublime metaphors for our need to the talk
people we no longer can, but find ourselves, sometimes, talking to them in our
minds. Here's the poem's account of a "Wind Telephone":
"...where the veil between
worlds is thin, the dead
can hear your news of graduations,
your purchase
of a home surrounded by oak trees,
daffodils, iris,
perfect haven for a pandemic
quarantine.
I used to call my mother in New York
and then
tune her out, let her criticism roll
over me without
comment, allowed her voice to
soothe. Today she’d
say, Are you eating well? You need a
haircut."
Yes, I need one of those phones. There
always seems to be a lot left unsaid.
"Youngsters are born into this
timeless flock
and others die
yet still the dance goes on.
A century ago the murmuration
circled
over women hanging out laundry
and children playing games at
backyard birthday parties.
A millennia ago it glimpsed the
earlier people
treading woodland trails
and building burial mounds
shaped like birds."
And
then it also becomes a metaphor for human 'flocks.' A strong and vivid poem.
Donna
Hilbert's "Days Waiting" is another poem that reveals itself as a
response to the sometimes ill-fitting cloak Covid Time has dressed us all in.
In an enumeration of life's inevitable waiting periods, that I hear as a chant,
the poem tallies:
"days waiting for summer to
start
days waiting for summer to end
days of migraine, nights of malaise
days of tedium, nights of dread:
I want them back
not for exchange, but to exclaim
this, too, my human life!"
Everything
matters, the poem tells us. Is this what we're learning?
At
least, Michael Gessner's insightful poem "Morning Words" tells us, we
still have mornings. His poem expands our way of looking at this daily
phenomenon:
"In poems, morning words
sound roundly odd, assume selves
born in sunrise, newly woken
to the world, a golden zone."
This
is a poem that scratches the surface of one of our most common everyday
experiences, blows away the dust, and polishes the real thing. It also gives me
another reason to get out of bed.
Barbara
Crooker's "Still Life With Aubergines, 1911," a graceful conversational
poem about Matisse's dynamic still-life, ends with some sound advice about the physical
as well as the painter's artistically depicted eggplants. These words not only apply
to the kitchen, but turn this fruit of a long, warm growing season into a
metaphor for our real summer:
"It could be bitter if not
cooked properly.
But salt it first, then simmer on
low
all afternoon, releasing its sweetness,
reminding us how summer is fleeting;
reminding us our days in the sun are
brief."
Judy
Kronenfeld's three lovely poems are all about the language. We're seeing common
experiences anew in these poems as well. In "Window Blinds Leaking Light"
it's a child being put down for an afternoon nap, a mother opening and closing the
blinds:
"She clicked them up
in gentled flamenco,
when I drowsed full
of dappled sleep, rippled
them down when rose light faded
to the color of their faded ribbons."
As
if this isn't gorgeous enough, we learn of an early morning waking:
2 A.M. — moonmelt pawprints
here and there on the black blanket
Jeweled
words.
Tamar
Madison's three poems give us metaphors for thinking about experiences many of
us have probably known and possibly wish we haven't. The title of "When
the Mind Unwinds" offers us the image of a damaged film strip to stand for
memory impairment.
And then immediately gives us a
second one:
"The bridges that once
linked thoughts collapse
into a jumble of rotting planks
and broken pilings."
Chances
are we have to pick our away through this construction debris to attempt contact
with an aging loved one.
I
was even more startled by her poem "The Guys Who Work Inside My Head,"
who, as the poem explains, when memory drops a stitch come to the rescue:
"I only have to wonder aloud
and move on
to another thought when I feel a
little tap
on my shoulder or sense the presence
of a calm being behind me and there
he is,
or she, or it, handing me a folder
wrapped in a metaphor containing
the datum I couldn’t bring to mind
that short time ago."
Beautifully
inventive writing. Now, I tell myself, I have a happy way to think about what's
going on when the word or name I've lost Monday wanders back, unsolicited, on
Tuesday afternoon... I must say however that there are times, and days, when I
fear the "guys" have lost my address.
These
are also the poems of our times. Some of us working, possibly harder than ever;
many of us taking our temperature, possibly a bit too often.
These
poems and many other memorable lyrics are available at http://www.verse-virtual.org/poems-and-articles.html
