A Colloquy; by Eira L’osee-Stine, May 2012
I met a dying birch on a morning that smelled of dew, earth, and tall trees. I greeted her:
“Deep peace of the rich soil to you
Deep peace of the running river;
Deep peace of the green grove to you
Deep peace of the warming sun.”
and was startled to hear her reply,
“Strength of root
Bend of stem
Twist of Branch
Be yours;
May you find darkness in the shining stars,
Knowledge in the silver moon,
Velvet in the midnight earth.”
I find I am not up to the task of giving any explanation for this one; it must stand on its own and speak for itself. It is the first time I have ever shared it in any form publicly.
The night stands intrepid, her cold and pitiless beauty
Adorned with glittering diamond stars
That pierce with shards of fiery ice
Yet go we on ignorant, laughing in loud cacophony
Deaf to banshee’s wail of warning
The world celebrates the birth of light
While we must mourn unholy death.
Now has this night of all nights,
Once so blessed, so hallowed and sweet
Become at once bitter, accursed, tormented.
How came our love thus to end stagnant?
Imbecilic, complacent, benighted utterly
So vile in your eyes, so bitter on your tongue
With eyes of fish and tongue of snake
Steeped in self-righteous hypocrisy.
So hideous, in truth, as to make Sheol a beauty
That painted whore whose bed is ashes
Was I truly, my love, so repugnant,
That she could entice, could beckon you inside?
Were her charms so many, my own so few?
Senseless, we shared no pang, suffered no shiver
With not one eye among us, blinder than the Fates
And crueler. So passed your wan succumbing
To the silent voice of that venomous widow
You brided her, who murders her lovers all.
You chose your poison well, my love
Ever will it punish us, your corpse our albatross
To hang putrid about our abhorred necks
Illumined by the grim ghost-light
By which we see you now eternal
So are you betrayed, destroyed not by hate
Which once we dared face united,
Emerging bruised yet triumphant; no –
But undone by weakness, by a watery love
Deserving not of that name.
Thus go I on, stumbling and blind
My heart, once your treasure, now your tomb.
I wrote this one a few days ago after a planetarium show called ‘Extreme Planets’, which followed closely upon several days of pondering two opposites which are very much alike: the microscopic and macroscopic universes.
The pattern shifts, but does not change
How false perception plays us,
Showing peace in the silent heavens,
Simplicity in diminutive stature.
When only distance deafens us
To the shrieking of white-hot stars
The raging of their molten children
The boil and seethe of galaxies.
And only distance blinds us
To the writhing swarm of life
Embedded in the cracks of our skin
Thriving in dark tunnels of bowel.
What we see as solid
Is mostly empty air;
What we feel is smooth
Raises jagged cliffs
Over dim-lit valleys
What we know is real
Shimmers in heat rising
Illusion often breaks, yet we
With frantic fingers pull
Its frayed edges back
Pretending a seamless whole
Actually exists.
I woke in the middle of the night quite recently from a vivid dream and wrote this:
Cold
Breathed an East Wind on her neck
As westward she wended her way
Breathless
She hurried on, clutching close
Shawl of rough-spun grey lambswool
Dark
Grew her thoughts as night’s sky
Drew long velvet mantle o’er land
Curses
She whispered, despairing
As day’s last light is extinguished
I have no idea who she is, why she’s lost, or what she is afraid of; the image was all the more vivid for being so disconnected with any logical train of thought or associations.
This is a more recent poem I wrote, after a walk through the woods in late Spring.
Barren strength of rock
Yields to soft persuasion
Windblown seeds crack, bring forth
From death throes, fragile beauty
Death-wielding birth
Life-giving death
Threadlike roots reach, tentative,
Blindly search for nourishment
Slender stem yearns toward light
Knowing its need of warmth
Humbly vulnerable
Nobly dependent
Cracks formed in granite’s face
Herald a wisp of pale green
Leaves unfurl, tiny brave banners
Masterpiece unseen yet perfect
Simple complexity
Modesty’s triumph
Delicate petals withdraw
Yet protect fertile center
Bloom soft ‘mid seeming harshness
Lift in joyful abandon
Confident frailty
Meek tenacity
Sun may sear it, exposed; instead
He bathes it in radiance
Deluge could drown, rock might crush
But rain soothes, stone shelters
Strength’s threat undone
Gently shelters beauty
Herein a lesson, fearful yet sweet:
You may destroy me; I must trust you will not.
I don’t know why I’m posting this one first, since it’s one of the more depressing ones I’ve written; but it seems to want to be first.
It’s called ‘Wounded’; I wrote it a few years ago. It was inspired by a girl left on the porch of a battered women’s shelter, hospitalized when she was found, who died without fully regaining consciousness.
She lies so still
Chestnut hair, golden filaments fanned
Stark pallor, canvas once pure
Now smirched by vivid palette
Violence wears a painter’s smock
Brush dipped in blood and tears
Broad strokes of purple
Blooming like nightshade
Flower misshapen on dusky skin
Sweeping lines of blue
And black lend silhouette
Scarlet threads drawn thin, delicate
Mock gentleness, ridicule beauty
Devourer come cloaked in love’s pure name
Here lie his pitiful leavings
Blind eyes that yet cry
Stopped throat still breathing
Weak hands do her pleading
Lent strength by desperate fear
To beg the love of strangers.
So apt, this striking addition
To Cruelty’s gallery, long and wide
Murmurs of comfort soothe and lull
Try to relieve, but know they must fail
Empty of meaning
Though truly well-meant
Machines hum counterpoint
Futile song, morbid concert
Robed guardians come and go
Wrapped in solemn silence
Priestesses minister healing
Efficient, bright, cold with distance
Sorrow-struck daze
Mourn the portrait: Pain, A Trust Betrayed
Hanging ‘twixt heaven and earth
Sleep dreamless and mend, broken child.
I don’t often attempt to write poems, because usually I feel pretty inadequate to the task. Poetry is daunting for someone as undisciplined as I am, so I have to be really inspired in order to sit down and actually try one. Over the years, however, I have written several, and I am pleased with them – while recognizing their limitations.
I don’t really follow any patterns or rules of literature, I just make line breaks instinctively. This can be very frustrating for real connoisseurs of poetry as an art form, so if you are one of these, please know that I make no pretensions and you are welcome to ignore this page.
I will post each poem separately, I think, to make them easier for me to find; but they will be in no particular order. I will accompany each with a brief explanation, if I feel up to it. Many of these poems were written in extremities of emotion, so I don’t know that I’ll even now be able to penetrate that storm with a rational explanation.
I hope that if you read them, you will enjoy them. I’ll start posting later tonight, I think.
