Selections From: Poems’ Progress

 

ONE LEMON

Still house after rain in the night,

small sun drops over the floor.

On the wood table

one lemon, fine-grained,

two daffodils, still dripping

from the garden, still too wet

for the water to pearl.

Stems green-lined like thin veneer.

One lemon. Daffodils, the yellow

that’s been missing

all winter. Even the chickens

had stopped laying, we had

to use market eggs, pale yolks.

The smell of these flowers

is from another earth.

Cut open the lemon, squeeze

and stir in honey,

maybe heal a sore throat.

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(First appeared in Poet Lore)

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 EXORCISM OF A NIGHTMARE

I sit on the bed, warm under blankets, and

there you are

on the chair facing me, probing,

“Why no poems these days?

Actually none of them are any good,

just more fifth-rate clutter

robbing the woods of their bones again.

Why not let the child use the paper

for his charming drawings?

Why not his father? The paper would help

start the fire, cold mornings.”

But I’m eating my words.

One day my mouth will open and the words

will roll out, thousands of miles

of scrolls with red lettering

and the air will fill

with words like Chinese kites

surging and dipping in the air,

dances even a child can read,

and we, lightened, will quite simply

walk across the street to King Tsin,

sit at the windows, order squid and ginger beef,

laughing at the leaping of the kites,

at the scrolls of silver flying in blue air.

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(First appeared in Poetry)