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Octubre 28, 2009
I prefer the messiness...
“I prefer the messiness that happens when ideas get tangled up with the visible world. Simply put, I’d rather show you than tell you.” - ron jude
Posted by sarita at 11:15 AM
Insect Life of Florida
In those days I thought their endless thrum
was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.
In the throats of hibiscus and oleander
I'd see them clustered yellow, blue, their shells
enamelled hard as the sky before rain.
All that summer, my second, from city
to city my young father drove the black coupe
through humid mornings I'd wake to like fever
parcelled between luggage and sample goods.
Afternoons, showers drummed the roof,
my parents silent for hours. Even then I knew
something of love was cruel, was distant.
Mother leaned over the seat to me, the orchid
Father'd pinned in her hair shrivelled
to a purple fist. A necklace of shells
coiled her throat, moving a little as she
murmured of alligators that float the rivers
able to swallow a child whole, of mosquitoes
whose bite would make you sleep a thousand years.
And always the trance of blacktop shimmering
through swamps with names like incantations—
Okeefenokee, where Father held my hand
and pointed to an egret's flight unfolding
white above swamp reeds that sang with insects
net over the sea, its lesson
of desire and repetition. Lizards flashed
over his shoes, over the rail
until I was lost, until I was part
of the singing, their thousand wings gauze
on my body, tattooing my skin.
father rocked me later by the water,
on the motel balcony, singing calypso
above the Jamaican radio. The lyrics
here the citronella burned, merging our
shadows—Father's face floating over mine
in the black changing sound
night, the enormous Florida night,
metallic with cicadas, musical
and dangerous as the human heart.
Lynda Hull
Posted by sarita at 12:23 AM
Back Yard
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
to-night they are throwing you kisses.
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
cherry tree in his back yard.
The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
white thoughts you rain down.
Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.
Carl Sandburg
Posted by sarita at 12:21 AM