poetry

Courage

Rae Spencer5 Comments

Courage

Courage surrounds her children
With sharp railed chairs
Rowdy friends and wasps
Conceding the wisdom of pain

She knows the world
Which her children must meet
Its deep rushing water
And sweet-tongued strangers
And cabinets lined with poison

Courage hopes children see clearly
Between fear and danger

She allows her charges
Conversation with fanatics
The writings of heretics
And knowledge of many gods
With their many different histories
Of savagery

She aches
When her children discover
That not all facts are truth
And not all truths can be known

And Courage stands by
As her children learn the only skill
That can ever, really, be learned
The individual and perfect art
Of survival

Where deep water holds less dread
For one who understands its current

Photo Failure, Tufted Titmouse

Rae Spencer2 Comments

I’ve been hearing a tufted titmouse call for weeks. These birds have a loud, clear call that carries. (You can hear a sample here.) I find it hard to guess how far away the bird is, when I hear one calling, but it always seems to be across the road or in a neighbor’s yard or a few streets over.

Today one visited our yard, hopping through the pear tree as it sang. I desperately wanted a picture of this little bird and managed to catch several frames of it. None of them are quite right. The top photos are my best shots of the day, but I never did get “the” picture.

The following are a few of my failures. They are like many of my writing failures, suffering from poor focus, flat light, or awkward angles. But, unlike my writing, I can’t save these photos. They are missed opportunities with no chance of salvage. I can’t edit them into success.

I hope to remember these photos the next time I sigh over a stubborn phrase, resenting the work of revision.

On the Learning of Things Small

Rae Spencer1 Comment

On the Learning of Things Small

Eve understood her sentence
The source of such expansive pain
Which blossomed in her womb
Seeded by an excess of knowledge

But her children
Though given the tale
Lapsed into miniature schemes
They hungered to harvest

New fruits and found suffering
Weaves through the smallest gaps
Like atoms and genes
Twined into a fitful scale

Until detonated, when
They unwind their blinding
Flash in every flesh, then
Mushroom into brilliant loss

Poet’s Block

Rae Spencer10 Comments

Poet’s Block

An image of a weathered seashell
Keeps my monitor from standing blank
Like a cruel mimic of the blank document
That repels my words
They fall from it
Veer around its margins
Break their brittle syllables against the screen

Which is once more a seashell
I press my ear to the shell’s flat shadow
To hear my own intent
The low tidal ebb of phrase
Whispered in computer current
But there is only hum
And static-snap
And the odd warmth of waiting

The shell’s soul was stolen
Taken from the ocean
In proof of all the wisdoms
That counseled fear of cameras
Because nothing whispers from an image
Nothing breathes
And yet

And yet all is there
Every conch curve
And shaded whorl
And all my words that failed
To echo the ocean
Or uncover the cloud shrouded sky
Or mention how snails are never simple

Or charge their syllables with metaphor
To mean more than a word
More than a blank screen
More than a poem
I haven’t written
Lost for days
In the image of a seashell

Published in The Journal of Liberal Arts and Education Winter 2010

From the “Lost” Section of the Lost and Founds

Rae Spencer2 Comments

From the “Lost” Section
Of the Lost and Founds

Missing for the past few years
But seen occasionally
Behind rising western thunderclouds
Or under a theater seat
Once hanging from the second chord
Of Clair d’Lune
Several times, reports will show
It was spotted in the empty spaces
Of Ursa Major
And it caused an accident
On a dirt lane in Kentucky
When it flew out of a yellow oak leaf

You’ll know it by touch
Like warm mud between your toes
And its smell of crayon

Confirmation will come
Days later
When you find yourself humming
Quick medleys of childhood song
And reciting nonsense rhyme

Offering a reward for its recovery:
That you shall keep it
If first you contact me
With news that it survives
That it wasn’t blown up
Or mortally wounded by gunfire
Or trapped forever by a politician
Hammered into a campaign speech

But isn’t it true
That all things lost
Must be found

What goes up
Must come down

As you are searching
Keep in mind
It will be in the last place you look
And where you least expect it

Published in The Journal of Liberal Arts and Education Winter 2010