Mountain walk, late summer

I walked through the cloud, the cloud walked
through me. It was like this for a long time
called morning.

From the cloud I saw
only what I saw—this step down,
this loose tooth of rock.

Slowing my pace, the cloud
moved faster, peeled back one corner shrouding
the mountain before me,

that I didn’t know
was there. The sky breathed heavy again.
Cold mist hung waiting

to be caught by the wind
that rules changes here.


Each time the veil slips down,
each time
it lifts a little, I wait,
half-expecting to see
a new landscape,
like wanting to fall
back asleep
to enter a new dream.

How silly
to have thought I was alone. Here
come children,
mouths all black
with wild blueberries.

an excuse

The Time

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this

in winter especially. Summer comes,

I want to tumble with the river

over rocks and mossy dams.

A fish drifting upside down. 

Slow accordions sweeten the breeze.

The Sanitary Mattress Factory says,

"Sleep Is Life."

Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon?

Yesterday someone said, "It gets late so early."

I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.

Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem. 

-----

Every summer I feel this way, though perhaps more than most this year. Travels to Canada and rural Oregon have gotten the wheels turning but my pen is still out of ink (mixing metaphors, even). Any suggestions for how to take well-lived poetic moments and get them onto the page?

some time ago, I heard from the wrong Greek woman

and since then I haven't known quite what to do with her. thoughts?


Penelope when pressed to speak

Then you tell me what the difference is exactly
between weaving and unweaving when
all I want is him, here, now. The future
makes as little difference as the past unmade.
I need these strings to keep my hands busy,
so that I can say “I’m waiting.” Without
waiting comes terror. Time passing.

a few more

Euryleia


Who will sing what must be sung
in plain speech? Antiope is dead—
Molpadia’s arrow thudded through
her body— so she exited the embrace
of Theseus, whose face froze, centaur-like,
to marble-carved disbelief,

despair. Do you know what you were
saving her from, Molpadia?
Do you know how we will save
ourselves, now, with nothing to fight for?



Melanippe


All of the answers are sleeping today,
making it the perfect weather to ask why
to these unbearable becauses. Come rain,
erase us, come thunder, make our voices again
useless. Night, come back
quickly, hide us from our bodies,
cover everything that is missing.

The cloth of the sky has been twisted
and twisted, wrung, pulled taut
against itself, by hands whose thoughts
are elsewhere. No rain comes.



Hippolyta (sleeping)


She haunts. Could it be only gods
are allowed to happen once, then rest? Apart
from us, a part
of us, apart, and unconfessed.

this answers for the moths

four and twenty

Hi All,

I've been off the gooseberry map for a long time. I was reading all the old post a couple weeks ago and saw the one about Four and Twenty. I submitted a little scrap of a poem and found out today that they accepted it. I wanted to share it, even though it's not my favorite. Hope you're all doing well, I've really enjoyed reading all the posts, despite my silence.

Heidi


When the Bass Player Dreams of Playing the Bass

Fingers find flesh in exchange for strings,
And blink out night-hidden rhythms.

another

Laodoke


I dreamt waterbirds and windstorms—
shriek, roar, the image of the world
dismantling itself before our eyes.

Then, alone, I watched my fingertips
fly off as moths, and I fell back into
the nothing that was left of everything.

My body gone, I felt a rising
from within, unalone, we rose
as a great wave to crest but never
crash, never scatter because
there is nothing left to fall against.