:: :: :: :: terrible dragon: slaying the world one poem at a time :: :: :: ::
Monday, December 26, 2011
So that forgetting might come
Early Morning Somewhere
Early morning Sedona or Mexican Hat, the light a murmuration of dragon skin asleep on your back, your bare arms goosed with cool flesh an open window allows.
Horses restless in an otherwise empty pen, wind on chain on a fulcrum globed in black iron and the absence of everything apparent like the brevity we keep to share together.
The road endures our lassitude, waits like the feralbone cat we fed coldcuts to as we parked just the night before, the crown of its graceless back purring arched motors.
Coffee, kisses, some shared words, the pulling moment smeared in the rearview. The windshield spreads the future before us like a present, torn and ribboned by our ruthless unwrapping.
So many mornings in the world, every day so many more. We leave them to others so that forgetting might come, the endless reminder that nothing holds on for long.
Low winter angles stoke light in the studio. Islands spill across a blue line of horizon. Chimney-smoke ghosts through the dozing houses. Bees plunder blossoms in wild rosemary. Roadrunner warms against an ember of sun. Red straw where the coyote kill took place. The mouse foot left behind by a stealthy owl. The miracle of the everyday arrives in the ordinary.
No one misses Martha Heckett anymore. She died years ago as did all of her friends. My young mother knew her when she attended Church of Christ, the single mom with four kids who needed all the help she could get. Martha and Brother Bill were there and helped. Brother Bill bought us groceries a few times, always welcomed us at the Sunday chapel door. Martha gave mother a bible. Every so often, I would have to move that bible to get to another book and found myself opening it on occasion. Not to read words of comfort or inspiration, but to read what Martha had written inside to my mother, some small moment laid out in heartfelt cursive. I can’t recall the words, but I liked reading them and remembering Martha’s kind face, a face lost to my recollection now as all memory of her has left this dear and difficult world, as my mother’s children have left to go about their lives. No one misses Martha Heckett anymore. But her inscription endures.
wisdom is worth all we lose to attain it. ~aucassin verdé
i wonder if the artist ever lives his life-—he is so busy recreating it. only as i write do i realize myself. i don't know what that does to life. ~anne sexton
you must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you. in my experience, those who do not like you fall into two categories: the stupid and the envious. the stupid will like you in five years time. the envious, never.~john wilmot, 2nd earl of rochester
art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. ~kahlil gibran
creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. art is knowing which ones to keep. ~scott adams
those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either. ~golda meir
i said to my soul, be still,
and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope
for the wrong thing.
wait without love,
for love would be love
of the wrong thing.
there is yet faith;
but the faith and the love
and the hope are all
in the waiting.
wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought.
so the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.
~t.s. eliot
