poet
April is the month long celebration of poetry. Join me and other poets at these events:
Sunday, April 10, 1 p.m. at the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery, 7 Canal Street, Westerly, Rhode Island
Friday, April 15, 7 p.m. at Byrd’s Books, 126 Greenwood Avenue, Bethel, Connecticut
Saturday, April 23, 2 p.m. at the Minor Memorial Library, 23 South Street, Roxbury, Connecticut
Support the arts and poetry in your community. Participate in other events and activities.
Curds and Whey
“Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
~Monty Python, Life of Brian
Temperatures regulate
and acid swirls; curds curdle
and tell reluctantly
of brown bearded goats
chomping grass
with pliant teeth and wandering
eyes. Far off in a kitchen.
the maker, with her chewed
apron and dangling cross
waits sourly for the spider.
5 lines x 7
Elsie, The Roller of Big Cigars, and the Grasshopper
so much depends
upon
the maker’s rage to order words of the sea
will never wholly kiss you—
Wholly ordered: rage to kiss words
5 lines, day 5
I pledge to read each
day’s oncoming slaughter
as a penniless
dark spur opening beneath
a cataclysm of daisies
Five lines (+/-), day 4.
Iron skillet
You school me with your trochees and well-oiled forgery
seasoned with elbow grease so that nothing
not the overnighting left overs
not the knife marks
not the hunger
stay for long, the most
anyone could ask
from fire.
elliptical shifts
bequeath February with
truant light; shape shifter skies—
like lamppost bulbs—following
the timed ascent to evening
Here is Emily Dickinson
Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps—
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs—
How many trips the Tortoise makes—
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!
Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite—
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?
Giving up the shell can be hard, but so worth it. After nomading, we find home.
Abandonment
Naked, the crab forgets
his hermit ways, creeping
in the oyster underworld,
brushing against minnow fins
and ugly red claws, until
nomading ends, and a home,
spiraled in calcium, appears.
A watery cosmos of green
awaits the refugee shell;
the sea is populated
by old dwellings, discarded
by molting crustaceans, spit out
for sand diggers and souvenir
hunters, strangled by a scarf
of seaweed or broken
with gravity’s axe, swung
by the long hand of the moon.
From Nomad’s End, 2010 Finishing Line Press
My good friend Mary Fletcher (in cahoots with my secret-keeping husband Eric) painted my portrait. It was a Christmas surprise, but also a wonderful celebration of the end of the year, the beginning of the new year, and especially our friendships and love of art. It’s also a never ending birthday gift. As strange as it is to see myself in paint, it’s been wonderful to reflect on what it means to be seen through other’s eyes and to see Mary’s generosity come through in her work.
The painting is richly textured, warm and cool, delicate and bold, subtle and bright. Mary painted the image from the author photo I’ve been using, but chose a completely unique color palette, which I love. The painting takes on a life of her own, one that I’m honored and humbled to be connected to. Thank you Mary.
West Highland Way, August 2011; a little tough, a little glorious
The True Weight
We make a list of all our favorite moments—
best hikes, finest meals— skipping
over the hard parts—when boots filled
with muck and rain froze our hands
and spun through the plastic
of our water-proof coats, each cursed step
you suffered through pain without ever
surrendering to sighs. Cataloging
the singular bluebell doesn’t really
tell the whole story. The tiny tear-shaped
flower pressed between “A Dream” and
“Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald”
in the pages of Robert Burns
does not relate the true heft of that volume—
the pages, browned and frayed, turn easily
one at a time but bound together
they hold the true weight of the poet’s words.
So too, yellow broom and wood sorrel
decorating the ascent through Glen Nevis
or the heather spilling lavender toward
the modest peak of Bien Inverveigh
can never be summarized
in one sprig of tiny rainbow blooms.
From Four Blue Eggs, Homebound Publications, 2014
Amy Nawrocki 