Alway a flower would be

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D a g n y

Front Porch

Columbia, South Carolina

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Because the Bee may blameless hum

For Thee a Bee I do become

List even unto Me.

Because the Flowers unafraid

May lift a look on thine, a Maid

Alway a Flower would be.

Nor Robins, Robins need not hide

When Thou upon their Crypts intrude

So Wings bestow on Me

Or Petals, or a Dower of Buzz

That Bee to ride, or Flower of Furze

I that way worship Thee.

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

The leaf turned to shadow

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W i n d o w   D r e s s i n g

Countryside

Union, South Carolina

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As from dark orchard leaves, from quiet scripts
where each shape sends its tendril reaching --
circle and line, the swaddled bud, the petiole
sprung, an envelope tendered.

By a window, the infant
turns, rooting
toward the breast,
sun-lit,
the mother humming.
(Those far things, sources
of power and
regret,
cliffs and waves,
continue
at a distance.)

Here you’ll find
a name scrawled in the bark --
last words, left to chance
and strangers.
There, the black ant, burdened
by a crumb, and the weight
of her lacquered armor,
crossing -- climbing,
switching, doubling
back -- gnarl and crevice and
cul de sac. 

Pinch-waisted,

driven on, and trembling,
does she have a notion
of her own, or is it
only species
memory -- so
fearless, so abstract?

because it is winter everywhere,
I spin my cocoon
I dig my heart a grave

Indifferent, a blossom
drifting, the knob swelling,
the leaf turned to
shadow: filigree, smudged.
The petiole now brittle in
the first cold nights.
The burden, relieved,
weighs all the more
from the guilt
of its release.

Too light, too light, like a sudden
waking, the sun in your eyes:
you cannot see for it.

How long will we live
in this leaf-strewn place,
thinking we belong
to the sky?

= Susan Stewart =

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Happy Friday

Language we can comprehend

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S h a d o w   L i s t e n e r s

Senate Street

Columbia, South Carolina

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O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Thursday

Say there were deer

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W i l d   F r e e   a n d   B r a v e

Allegheny Cemetery

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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One winter I lived north, alone
and effortless, dreaming myself
into the past. Perhaps, I thought,
words could replenish privacy.
Outside, a red bicycle froze
into form, made the world falser
in its white austerity. So much
happens after harvest: the moon
performing novelty: slaughter,
snow. One hour the same
as the next, I held my hands
or held the snow. I was like sculpture,
forgetting or, perhaps, remembering
everything. Red wings in the snow,
red thoughts ablaze in the war
I was having with myself again.
Everything I hate about the world
I hate about myself, even now
writing as if this were a law
of nature. Say there were deer
fleet in the snow, walking out
the cold, and more gingkoes
bare in the beggar’s grove. Say
I was not the only one who saw
or heard the trees, their diffidence
greater than my noise. Perhaps
the future is a tiny flame
I’ll nick from a candle. First, I’m burning.
Then, numb. Why must every winter
grow colder, and more sure?

= Jennifer Chang =

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Dedicated to the memory of Stanley Ray Weber

July 28, 1925 - January 8, 2011

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Happy Monday

Where the sparrows tie loose knots

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D e c e m b e r   B l u e

Winter Past

Columbia, South Carolina

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From a ways, the sky and your hands
come to my eyes, from some distant part of you;
it’s snowing out, you’re all in the white of the snow
every track in the candor a wound
and the field beyond the window is a body
a glance that becomes a pronouncement,
the heat of breath, your head adrift in sleeplessness;

that’s where it returns, in a word translated into silence
where the sparrows tie loose knots
your palms on your eyes, chest on your knees
forehead in the snow.

= Pierluigi Cappello =

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Happy Friday