Caedmon, Denise Levertov

 Caedmon

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

All others talked as if

talk were a dance.

Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet

would break the gliding ring.

Early I learned to

hunch myself

close by the door:

then when the talk began

I'd wipe my

mouth and wend

unnoticed back to the barn

to be with the warm beasts,

dumb among body sounds

of the simple ones.

I'd see by a twist

of lit rush the motes

of gold moving

from shadow to shadow

slow in the wake

of deep untroubled sighs.

The cows

munched or stirred or were still. I

was at home and lonely,

both in good measure. Until

the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing

my feeble beam,

a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:   

but the cows as before

were calm, and nothing was burning,

             nothing but I, as that hand of fire   

touched my lips and scorched my tongue   

and pulled my voice

                            into the ring of the dance.

Denise Levertov, "Caedmon" from Breathing the Water. 

The Summer Palace, Michael Lue ig

The Summer Palace

Michael Luenig

Make a little garden in your pocket,

Fill your cuffs with radishes and rocket,

Let a passionfruit crawl up your thigh,

Grow some oregano in your fly.

Make a steamy compost of your fears,

Trickle irrigate your life with tears,

Let your troubled mind become a trellis,

Turn your heart into a summer palace.

Getting Close, Victoria Redel

Getting Close

by Victoria Redel

 

Because my mother loved pocketbooks
I come alive at the opening click or close of a metal clasp.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, a faux crocodile handle makes me
   weep.

Breathy clearing of throat, a smooth arm, heels on pavement, she
   lingers, sound tattoos.

I go to the thrift store to feel for bobby pins caught in the pocket
   seam
of a camel hair coat.

I hinge a satin handbag in the crease of my arm. I buy a little
   change purse with its curled and fitted snap.

My mother bought this for me. This was my mother's.

I buy and then I buy and then, another day, I buy something else.

In Paris she had a dog, Bijou, and when they fled Paris in 1942
   they left the dog behind.

When my mother died on February 9, 1983, she left me.

Now, thirty years later and I am exactly her age.

I tell my husband I will probably die by the end of today and all day he says, Are you getting close, Sweetheart? And late in the afternoon, he asks if he should buy enough filet of sole for two.

From a blue velvet clutch I take out a mirror and behold my lips in
   the small rectangle.

Put on something nice. Let him splurge and take you out for
   dinner, my mother whispers on the glass.