Monday, April 13, 2009

Days 11 & 12





Day 12


For Childhood, an elegy

"The imagination spans beyond despair
Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer."

from For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen, Hart Crane


Our castle, built of white sheets strung
on mother's laundry line smelled
of sunshine and dandelion,
a limp stemmed flower tucked behind my ear.

Do you remember the span of grass
between the swing-set and the sandbox
we called the Groundless sea?
Your ship the latest cardboard box we fished

from my father's trash.  Your cargo, provisions
of pebbles and sticks.  
I loved the choppy blonde ocean
of your hair and never tired of trying to decode
the secrets stamped in the map of your eyes

those two, ragged petaled irises.  

These stories still draw themselves 
in stringy clouds set
inside fiery sunsets, in the open and close of spiral shells 
in the sparrow's mottled wing

what is real we didn't imagine -- 

but if I look too close,
I see wrinkles in my hands and wonder how we manage 
to live with ruined Troy 
burnt and smoking 
inside our human hearts.


Day 11




2 comments:

cafe selavy said...

In childhood, not thinking, not thinking. Watch their eyes. You can tell when the thinking begins. Then. . .

BG Dodson said...

Just reading these pieces strung across the days...the weeks of this month and wanted to say, you have a voice that is unique and worthy of reading.

Is good. Do not stop. Month is not even half over.