If there were no life
Would not the Earth
Still have beauty?
If skies were not
So blue
Nor clouds so shapely
Set against blue
If tides never rose
To purl across sand
If all were stone
Pocked with volcano
Cluttered with crater
Naked of everything air
Would not the Earth
Still have beauty
If there were no eyes
To catalogue her wonders?
How He Named Himself
He was magician
At the back of his tongue
Language awoke
Invoked the porous senses
In example, the word “blue”
From his mouth
Fell into air
Unfurled before his eye
To fill an ocean
Or a cloudless sky
Breezed with recollection
Bitter and sweet
Like summer drowned in heat
Other words named other seasons
Spring’s flushed lovers and mothers
Fall’s jealous kings and princes
A blush of yellow stamen
Vain, reduced to bare reflection
While legions tolled to war
Because he said “winter”
And Krakatoa split
And every illness known to man
Rattled into silence
Until his lips shaped “time”
With all its varied futures
Claiming death and birth
Irrelevant, like glacial ice
Though he never said “ice”
Because “cold” would do
Or “lonely”
A chill on the skin
Squeezed down to marrow
With all the scenes he wove aloud
Chorused, plural tenses
In a singular verb
The act that names him “poet”
I made this video in early March of last year. Today is an almost perfect repeat. It’s a day made for blankets, manuscript revisions, and query letters. It’s the kind of day that makes me grateful for my laptop, because my feet get cold when I have to sit at my desk.
Publication update:
I’m happy to report that one of my poems, “The Devil Is in the Details”, appears in the most recent issue of Willows Wept Review, released this week. Issue Thirteen is available in print and PDF download.
The Cat
In my house is a one-eyed cat
Poised for luck on a windowsill
Her remaining eye is cataract clouded
Clarity lost in a dark instant
A distant wound salvaged
By surgery, her blind futures averted
She is pure patience perched
On a shadowed brink of world
Blurred by screen and mystery
Unaware of her own tragedy
Unruffled, the cat is vigilant
Staring down lawn with one imperfect eye
Lest light slip past her window
Tragically unobserved
Before I Knew
Before I knew pleasures
Should be guilty
I climbed trees
Forfeiting homework and chores
In search of the beginning
Of wind
In those days shadows danced
Proved the sun moved around the Earth
(Did Ptolemy climb trees?)
Before I knew history
Was more ancient than myself
I hunted arrowheads
Scouring new plowed furrows
I exhumed fallen masterpieces
Of war
In those days summer ruled
Proved we would live forever
(Was Einstein once a child?)
Before I knew memory
Shaped the future
I dreamed easily
Dozing among the branches
Bare feet thickly shod
With dirt
In those days apples beckoned
Proved the universe was infinite
(Did Newton also dream?)
Published in The Powhatan Review, Vol. V, Number 1, Summer 2005
Rae Spencer 