Solace

The heaviest clouds are memories now,
and each thorn gives up its rain.
I dreamt I saw your shadow,
a flicker at the edge of the meadow.
Every step took me hours and hours,
and when I reached you you had gone.
In the trampled grass where the doe makes her bed,
a damp and budding armful: peony, lavender,
strawberry, thistle.
These are the flowers of my heart,
and in new sun they will bloom.







painting by Cassandra Barney

Presence

I could be blind on this gold day,
not know the honest sun
save for its tender warmth.

I could be deaf as a desert stone,
not know the drowsing murmurs
of one lamb to another.

I could be mute and never tell
another soul the size and shape
of all these breathing beauties.

But I couldn't be here,in this sweet meadow,
and not know your love
by its scent. There is no life
without this bounty, there is
no day without fruit.





painting by Cassandra Barney

The Language of Flowers: Lily of the Valley

sweetness, humility, healing, spring, a return to happiness

I sleep late. The lawnmowers
do not wake me, nor the landlord's
angry wife. The light
finds my eyes gently,
as the rain begins. The house
is empty. The bright street,
deserted. The comforter
has been rejected, a cool white dog
at the foot of the bed.

All the clocks are wrong or gone,
I guess he took his with him. I force open
a window. It is time to start the day.





painting by Cassandra Barney
another season of floriography begins.

Next Year in Cannon Beach

Cassandra Barney and I will not be appearing at the Spring Unveiling in Cannon Beach, Oregon this year. Ernst & Ernst Collectors Gallery, our host from last year, has closed its doors. However, Cass has parlayed her relationship with nearby Bronze Coast Gallery into plans for next year.

So! Next year, in Cannon Beach! And with all this time to collaborate, you had better believe we're going to put together something fierce.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Atonement: new work from Cassandra Barney.

I would love to write something to accompany this image but the painting itself is so eloquent and poetic that anything else would be overkill.

Interlude: Happy Birthday, Cassandra Barney

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one miss Cassandra Barney, my inspiration, collaborator and friend. Take a minute today, if you will, to cruise over to her blog and send her birthday wishes, or just think glittery thoughts in her general direction. She works hard, plays hard, dreams hard, and loves hard, and I only hope today is all that it can be for her, that she is inundated with affection and children's drawings and good wishes.



Thistle
Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode stripes through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars pricked holes
in the black paper above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around the big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.

Night in the Garden

There are monsters in the garden,
gnawing tomatoes into pulpy lace,
pea pods into twigs. Their pincers
arc, little crescents in the light
of the harvest moon.

The earwigs shy
from the divine fire of my flashlight.
They cling to the stakes as I shake them down
like walnuts.

At the fence I slow my sword of judgment.
The ripe sunflowers hold the day's heat still,
and snug in the heart of the widest lion face,
the bumblebee hums in his sleep.

The night is suddenly so loud, alive
with cries for love and hunger.
The flashlight clicks off beneath my heavy thumb.
I back slowly from the nursery.






photograph by Cassandra Barney

October 25th: Tree of Life/Men and Angels

To those of you in the New York City and Connecticut area*:



Come say hello! There will be art, and book signing, and Cass, and Emily, and James, and me! It's sure to be a fantastic show.


*The gallery is about an hour outside of the city, convenient to train stations, and you really have no excuse.

The Death of the Hummingbird

Suddenly the sky (Yes, always yes, since you
were bold enough to ask) is too fast.
The ground too, the twigs and grasses
that reached like children yesterday today
are mad and waving.

You do not close your eyes,
but fall and feel the slowing
of a blurred heart,
and the busy little priests of your parasites
all chant the same last rites.






Uria by Audrey Kawasaki
Hummingbird body from Cassandra Barney

What Remains

We found the bones on the beach—
blanketed with gray feathers,
hollow like drinking straws.
Overhead the late gull’s children
mourned relentlessly. The carcass,
stripped as it was by crabs and wind,
was not new.
The waves crept closer. With a snap
you split the wings, a ragged break
down the brittle breastbone.
You sent one wing to sea. The other
capped a driftwood crucifix,
the waterlogged wood dripping
with kelp and spinning shells.
My numb fingers traced the tracks I knew
in the sand. A pile of cold stones
for ink, shifting shoreline
the blank page.
Your wings departed, but I stood
by my word. Six letters in the sand:
remain.

More from Cannon Beach: My Wing Sailing

My Wing Sailing

You can read more about the project here.

Anima del Paradiso

I.
As the thick clouds slid
A cold blanket on the sun
You came, dear ones, with
Little feet that tickled like
Sunshine on my skin.

II.
You ate the small green evils
That fed on my sick heart, and
Spread your love across
Its damp cage.

III.
I will make this place
Heaven’s garden for you,
My angels, and fill
It with the sweetest flowers
I can find.

Offerings: Poppy

Darkness and light, imagination, consolation, oblivion

It was dark when I woke
this morning, and I lay for a time
at the foot of the bed, the fingers
of one hand on my best dress,
laid out too. Now in the garden
beyond the window giant poppies stir,
cold red fingers on their own
black dresses.

The dew creeps in. Down the road
the others are waking, startled
from epic dreams. Their gardens
are sweetly scented, their eyes bright.
They offer innocence, beauty,
awareness.
We do not know where we are going.
I suck the light in
like a new moon
and rise to greet the yellow day.



painting by Cassandra Barney

The Incumbent

The night before the coronation
We walked the palace gardens at dusk,
Small servants rustling like shadows in her wake.

We passed beneath a magnolia tree. Birds scattered,
leaving a pile of perfect pink-stained petals.
I bent at the waist, a low and careful bow. My left arm curved
To collect the fallen bounty. “Don’t,”
She said. From knee level my blue eyes flicked
To the steel sparks of hers. “Don’t pick it up,”
and don’t put it down.”

And today suitors, lovers, insincere supplicants,
Know they will find no open hands here. Nor enemies,
No bare breast. At night the grounds are littered
With magnolia blossoms,
And the darkness brings only sleep.

painting by Cassandra Barney

Cannon Beach

The gallery show in Oregon was a tremendous success. After a dramatic unveiling (apparently that's how they do it in Oregon) Cass sold nearly all of her paintings. The gallery owner was so pleased with the results of our collaboration that he has invited me back for next year's show, where he wants to have a full-scale poetry reading and offer hand-bound books of my poetry and Cass' drawings for sale.

I am adrift in a sea of thankfulness.

For several years I studied Japanese tea ceremony, an intricate process that facilitates the most wonderful stillness I've ever experienced. Many of the steps of the ceremony involve bowing: to the host of the ceremony to thank her for having you, to the guest who drank before you to thank her for showing you the way, and to the guest who will drink after you to thank her for allowing you to drink first.

"And now," said my ancient sensei every time, "is making the one more bow: thank you to whole universe."

Thank you, to whole universe.


Now that the show has been Officially Unveiled I'll be posting the backlog of poetry...once I finish all this work that piled up while I was skipping down the Oregon coastline. You can check out Cass and I waxing ridiculous on collaboration on Youtube.

For anyone who will be in the Portland, Oregon area next weekend: Ernst & Ernst Collectors Gallery in Cannon Beach is hosting a three-day show of Cassandra Barney's new paintings, several of which are accompanied by my new poetry. Cass and I will be there--stop in, see the Pacific Ocean, say hi. We'd love to see you.

For more details click here.

The Language of Flowers: A Collaboration in Process

Hellebore
Calumny, scandal, treatment for madness and paralysis, highly poisonous

I will love you like loving you
Will cure me. I have seen
The others cast you into fires,
Hissing your name as your legs curled
And glowed; I have heard
What you did to Alexander, who slept
Like any other man, wrapped in your arms,
Great no more.

I have seen your children ground into dust,
Tipped into bottles, pulled in droplets to clapping mouths;
I have seen eyes go black with the force of you.
And when I am yours, and yours alone,
They say your face will open, like a shield of angels’ wings
To bear me hence.



painting by Cassandra Barney

Overactive, Daughter of the Pantheon

She opened her mouth wide and pushed the disk of the moon in,
held it on her tongue like the body of Christ.
Last week she had hit a cat with her car,
and as she buried its cooling heart commended
its soul to what gods as would find it
and weigh it properly,
and its body to the mounds of earth
just off the Post Road.
As the first drops of rain spotted her cheeks
she felt her feet growing together,
silver-scaled like armor.

Mummified Cat by Cassandra Barney

Deirdre Departing

Darling, I told you already:
Don’t think of me leaving,
Don’t think of me going. Think,
Dear heart, of the staggering size of the world, the
Doors I have never even seen.

Today dawned bright blue and he appeared, a
Daedalus to take me to the sun. There was no
Decision, no breath of doubt. We are
Dizzy in the sky the night left behind;
Our hearts dart toward it, dancing, darling—

Don’t think of me leaving.


Deirdre Departing With Her Deer by Cassandra Barney, created for "D" of The Alphabet Show

Thistle

Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars made pinpricks
in the black ocean above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around our big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.


Thistle by Cassandra Barney