and to be open to the spells they cast.
Portland, Maine
June 2012
New Poems
These are the hours to revel in.
BLESSING ON THE POETS
Patient earth-digger, impatient fire-maker,
Hungry word-taker and roving sound-lover,
Sharer and saver, muser and acher,
You who are open to hide or uncover,
Time-keeper and -hater, wake-sleeper, sleep-waker;
May language’s language, the silence that lies
Under each word, move you over and over,
Turning you, wondering, back to surprise.
HOMEBIRTH
Home is a birthplace since you came to me,
pouring yourself down through me like a soul,
calling the cosmos imperiously
into me so it could reach to unroll
out from the womb where the wild rushes start
in a quick, steady heartbeat not from my own heart.
This is my body, which you made to break,
which gave you to make you, till you bear its mark,
which held you till you found your body to take,
(open at home on my bed in the dark).
ABORTION SPELL
Let’s keep the world through its own balanced kiss,
the kiss come from women made of our own blood,
the holder, the cooler (redeeming the earth,
shaping the room where we give you your birth).
Hands born of woman will not stop this flood,
this generous, selfish, long-opening gift.
YOUR LAND
As I went walking in the land of our heart,
I found the animals crying.
Their mouths and warm bodies were sudden and slow
And they moved slow and hard to the edge of the woods.
Their legs and their heartbeats and skins were dying.
They curled up like snails at the end of the world.
This land is your land, this land is my land.
As I went out walking, the trees became bark.
They turned in their power and knowledge and pain.
Their arms grew wide open, their lives fell apart.
I heard them in peace and I heard them in horror,
And each leaf or hand was the eye of a world.
This land is your land, this land is my land.
As I went walking by the side of the sea,
I found the waves understanding.
They rolled out of silence and into the mist,
And into the light where it seemed they were pouring.
They roiled with pollution and anger and love,
And the currents of freedom kept rolling.
This land is your land, this land is my land.
STONE AND CLOTH AND PAPER
At every gust the dead leaves fall
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Rainy Day”
Two close centuries of stone and cloth and paper
chalked your cheeks and carved your hands to broken.
You are not a monument any more, now—
more like a forest
moving shadows under simple trees, dark rivulets
mottling snow fading in this warm gray winter,
melting the centuries you didn’t know, Henry Longfellow—
wait—I can hear you—
a low and earnest voice, wind in fir trees, burning
through this room, where you wrote your saddest poem,
through this house, where the farm and family built you.
Your sister Ann’s portrait
stumbles, eyes black as night behind a candle.
The marble urn in your red brick yard has fallen,
knocked down in the emptiness of the fountain.
Cries of the seagulls
reach through walls to find you again, pour down
the carrying knowledge that grew your branching gardens—
and tell me which old words, which new wings, will carry
you from this courtyard.
THE NAMING
Lopez, Jurgens, Lozowsky, O’Connor, Lomax
(Shoes, and spirals, dust, and the falling flowers)
Díaz, Dingle, Galletti, DiPasquale,
Katsimatides
Wounds widen the remembering earth.
Closed eyes see beyond the flames.
Grief opens hands to feel the wind.
Heart beats like ocean and hears the names:
DiStefano, Eisenberg, Chung, Green, Dolan,
