poetry – Page 10 – Press Send Poetry

Ursula (in Fells Point)

In Fells,
her hair in short braids and
shaved sides
popular on boys in the 80s,
she stands
in the humidity that wraps
around her baggy shorts,
rolled socks, under a street lamp
that drenches her tie dye Dead shirt—

She is singing
“will it go round in circles”
guitars follow “will it fly high like
a bird up in the sky”
and the drums inside
remind me of the late hour.

She looks pleased on the cobblestones.
Her Robert Johnson voice
sings this valedictory song
to no one in particular.

(poem from 2010 republished today!)

written by an old woman

around me in a stillness, a lonlieness
composed of slow shadows and lights
this old house takes its rest with a creak
echoing down the hall to my musty bedroom
shared by only one, the creaks reminding me
of how my knees used to climb stairs
and how these bedsprings used to jump when
he was alive and how the kids used
to clatter and creak through the kitchen
how the years turn like a watch rusting

click click creak

how memories torture me daily but at night they
meekly creak a complaint before I tie them up
and flush them with the efficiency of a proud soldier.

Braiding

We, with long fingers and
deft movements,
tame freshly washed hair
into three equal parts.

Without thought,
strands become one,
twisting over and
over to fall gently down
a smooth bare back

in the mirror,
we turn, preening-
smooth the sides
stroke the length of braid.
Ghostly generations
nod approval.

bread is baking

bread is baking –
blue hairnet bakers
finish their shift;
Baltimore rises.

campfire memories

Soft white pine needles
Have a way
Of smoking:

Crackling first
Then plumes of white wispy
Faces form,
Smoke so dense and peering
From soft pine logs you
Hope to light,

Faces of smoke
That drift long and thin,
Long after pine needles
Have extinguished,
Long after you have gone to bed.

The Weight (haiku)

lie down in flowers,
how your body is now the weight
of dirt blocking sun.

Burial Rites on White Island Volcano (haibun)

The way the sulfur burns our throats on this molten prison
This smoking island “it can’t possibly be worth it” digging
Yellow neon sweating rock – but oh how on some sun-filled days
The deep water around us seems gentle and free and how the birds
May have returned to say goodnight as we settle in, bones aching
From hard labor, our feet covered in volcanic dust, our nostrils
Burnt with the sulfur, oh it is ungodly quiet when we settle in to sleep,
It is quiet when the lahars bury us at sea….

End of days foretold
swiftly the darkness becomes
a light to walk towards.

[written about the the White Island volcano in New Zealand: “Attempts were made in the mid 1880s, 1898–1901 and 1913-1914 to mine sulphur from White Island but the last of these came to a halt in September 1914, when part of the western crater rim collapsed, creating a lahar which killed all 10 workers. They disappeared without trace, and only a camp cat survived.”]

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