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Where the Reverie is Apt to Lead
"A visual, unspoken witness cries out in every language."
~Carol Connell
1.
This isn't about prayer as such
but concerns the yellow flowers and the barking dog,
the coffee shop downtown, where memory floods
the mind in uneven scenes, and no one prays or even
pauses as though he might pray, drinking the depth
of the city's drivel. This is a poem about living:
about visions in a world of dreams, about rough places
in the world's basement, where we see, hear,
and smell the vomit, before drifting off to chase truth.
This is about the man who sits in the gutter, wearing mis-
mated socks—he's a lot like us—and about
other common places the reverie might lead.
2.
This is about the one lonely voice,
singing a plaintive song,
near the pond in the woods. That pond—
apart from the river—is shrinking and dying,
due to a lack of rain. White geese glide
like dancers on the flowing, nearby river,
like swans on a silver pond
with only the goslings making a splash.
The ducks act like vulgar cousins:
Poor, like ours: And ugly.
The ones whose house remains unpainted—
inside and out, year after year—
the ones with pink flamingos on their lawns
made of dirt, the ones who sing gospel or blues,
pluck a banjo, smoke cigarettes, drink cheap
whiskey deep in the night deep in the woods,
where skinny kids left clothes on bushes
and jumped—naked—
into that slime of receding pond-water.
3.
This is about life, deep in the heat of summer,
when a too-late deluge floods the now-charred barn.
No animals were hurt in the fire or the storm,
but ashes float in a misplaced lake. The farmhouse is
gone. And the old woman—who lost all but hope—
sits on a nearby hill, watching the dawn, petting her goat.
She doesn't stifle her out-of-place laughter. No.
Last night she saw a quarter moon. And now,
as the sun lights her on-going trouble, she sees
the outhouse survived and is standing intact.
This is about trouble and laughter.
4.
Is there no love on this whirling earth,
only the urge to brainwash, with even
our government always watching, feigning
protection, so that every other Friday a suspect can
be penciled in to the some category between freedom
fighter and poet? Why, even our love-lives glow bright
in the havoc. The earth spins and spins,
through the floods and volcanoes, with rumors
and wars outside every window. The moderns
search their search engines for the language
of perfection. Our differences multiply daily.
We gather—in every impoverished temple—
where we forget the witch hunts of Salem.
The sins of many mothers drowned in the river,
in the low light of the morning's hidden sun.
The sins of the fathers still bloody our hands.
This isn't about prayer as such but concerns how
we might gather humanity together,
where God once hurled silvered confetti,
sweet children made snow angels. My reverie—
thankfully—leads me here. But will we kill our own
kind, without praying or even pausing, as though
sin did not abound either then or now? This is
about human need.
5.
This concerns a biker who stops with his woman
on a mountain road, shuts off the engine,
gazing with wind-burned eyes,
the chick's hair without a helmet:
a tangled glow in sunshine.
The flower growing from her shoulder
is, perhaps, a rose or an oxeye daisy.
On his arm just below her name,
a tattooed viper strikes.
Her sun-burned arms encircle her man,
glowing with sweat. They walk toward
endless fields of tall, red clover.
Gently, she kisses his weathered neck,
strokes his torso: bare and rough,
sticky and hairy, specked
with flecks of silver-shining mica.
6.
See the picture. Look at what shows
on the couple's faces. They have not been on safari.
It is not the animals they seek, as into the jungle—
with steadfast hearts—they go. They are not without
hope but have people both to learn from and to teach.
Their mission is their life. And they have learned
many lessons. They have been gone from here for
thirty years to that dark continent, where life began
and is oftentimes renewed. This is about them
and how Azania is the place they now call home.
7.
This isn't about prayer as such
but concerns tidewater—as welcome as a friend—
mountains at their colored peak, clean Missouri air,
the wind that brought me flowers—white and light—
the blossoms of a Bradford Pear. The same wind
the next day teased my senses with pollen.
This concerns the tender violets that hid in the sparseness
of springtime grass in front of the forsythia bush.
I set the violets afloat on water with pear-blossoms
in a small bowl of Depression Ware
pink from my grandmother's kitchen.
I'm a granddaughter she never knew.
O, how I loved the sweet peas she left
to thrive on the backyard fence. A prayer for me?
8.
At twilight—
in awe at the ocean's edge—
we, who look with telescope eyes, marvel
before turning silent,
see what the heavens declare:
the tide in moonlight,
a falling into the song of the sea,
an audible spectrum of tender melody—
rising and sung
to welcome the sun at yellow dawn—
to worship with color and sound like an anthem
in the mountain of the memory and the sky.
9.
Rumors of war happen daily; people ride bikes;
houses burn. But this is about where the reverie leads,
how the yellow flowers, the barking dog,
the poor cousins, every sun rise and sunset,
pond, lake, river, every person living
with trouble and laughter,
every memory, every color, every sound becomes
prayer—with God as witness—
when the lonely unite in unsullied silence
and open their windows toward the world.
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