HERE BELOW ARE 18 OF THE 84 POEMS IN ENTER SHADOW, ENTER LIGHT–– A NOTE FROM SHIRLEY–– When I was a young woman I wrote a poem in which I went to the ocean on the day I turned 80, sat on a substantial rock, and let myself die. This was a gentle and welcome death. Blissful. Solitary. I'm 78 now, feeling the nearness of 80. I no longer expect to have total control over my death (of course not) but I do expect this life of mine to collect itself and move on at some point, so I'm gathering. Enter Shadow, Enter Light is the result of sorting: reading, revising, choosing, discarding from a list of poems written almost entirely in my 70s—poems I wrote while also writing my second novel and several chapbooks. I think of this as my final poetry collection, though one never knows. SAMPLE POEMS–– FROM PART ONE: "THE INDEFINABLE NET" Also, Infinite Time is another material, surfaced, shaped, tinted; holding; releasing with care. (Uncaged abruptly, we'd dissipate.) It's this simple moment, limited, like point of place. Sitting on this chair in this backyard, I cannot be elsewhere. Not now. Peering at shy cardinal on near feeder, I cannot be elsewhen. Not here. Tiny, these points. Tiny. Another Attempt To restate: only the simplest (existence) binds altogether. Amid complications, wisdom spouts at odd angles and cannot be captured in a cup. We drink differently. Some hold with both hands, some place on near table between times. Each is wisdom. Cups are, it turns out, sometimes necessary. Or we might watch for the prism effect in the cannily uncaught unheld spray of the variegated day. But nothing surpasses the feel of a warm smooth cup on a clear morning. I must be a two-handed grasper to say such a thing. Bright Beyond Reason A clearness has returned. It stands restored. —Wallace Stevens After a difficult day, the self overspent, the sleep gods absent, night opens. The full moon has left us a segment. It was evening orange at the horizon, pale yellow as it ascended the sky. In the depth of dark it is absolute white, radiant. Colors of a cold and dusty broken rock, one might think— intriguing, lacking meaning. Still, the unnerving miracle recurs, bright beyond reason. The broken moon becomes a sign of simple steadiness. With predictable shifts, it keeps to its apparently primeval path, its appearance and reappearance secure for this small time, this smidgeon in the vastness of eternity when bits of being, human, have need of it. None of this will outstay time but in the night the far cold thing, more complex than it appears, even perhaps more knowing, borrows a brightness and sends it to us. Our many eyes peer into the vivid, bold clarity. The brightness is streaming out of or into itself and we are permitted to conjure clear thought, permitted, moment by moment, eyes opened, eyes closed, deep in the night, while the sleep gods—courteous-- keep their humble, sufficient, necessary distance. If I Should Die Tomorrow My regret, not insignificant, is for those who still make use of me. In the flesh. In this time. In this place. The jumble of me, still precious to some. But let us speak of the luminous: that I have been-- that I have been this one, this speck exploding every instant into the entirety, exactly as all others, uniquely. I close my eyes and lay myself against the horizontal light. Thin is the ghost who lies below, and sufficient. Insomnia Two questions wander the dark, shy blind twins seeking each other after long separation. Why do I (still) write? What is my (current) God? Night after night I hear them whispering into the mist. Persephone, Marked She it is Queen Under The Hill whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words that is a field folded. —Robert Duncan She strays, compelled by beauty, and is taken, as thought is taken, from the hilltop to the underworld, and made to sit, as if for glory, on a high stiff throne beside a high stiff god. The mother's howl secures an incomplete release: the girl returns, permitted now-- but only in divided time-- to run again in sunlight and in wind, to see the flowers again, and hold her half-relieved, half-grieving mother. Released, she carries, hidden in the folded inner field, disturbance: words blown wild within a wilderness of words, mark of the strange dark place she strangely shares, as all thought strangely shares, half-time, under the holy hill. The Writer's Naked Mind Laid Open i. Like a fish pulled struggling from deep waters filleted, seasoned, baked, consumed, digested, the waste of it discretely excreted, and, despite having been pulled struggling from deep waters, despite all, amenable ii. Like a book lying on the table, spread under soft lamplight, offering itself (patient, desiring) for penetration iii. Like a woman's body aging, wrinkled, sagging, ready FROM PART TWO: "LOVE AND DEATH" The Mother, the Daughter, the Other Barbed wire surrounds the ancient mother-brain. This is metaphor. Being metaphor, lacking matter, the wire cannot be cut through. It wraps the brain's boundary, permits the prying daughter no entrance. But alone at night the daughter peers, sees into the far, fenced, stubborn little brain, barbed and distant though it be; sees, despite metaphor, despite matter, the dance. Here shortness of breath counts not, nor limited strength, nor failed anchoring to fact. Inside the aged brain bright places are where God still comes. Through barbed wire the daughter watches the soul gyrate, the God erupting, the Visitor. The Problem of Perspective If the Limit Is Two Dimensions She is my little antihero, my tiny old one, struggler, desiccated and cranky, out of whom, I: unready to suckle, sick from her milk, or the lack, yelling the nights away, desiccated. Time folds the fabric, crone against infant. Tiny to tiny, we chafe, two wrinkled screamers. The Word Must Learn Its Limit i. As if the efforts of language could-- in the wake of the death of the mother-- But no. ii. Nevertheless, the attempt-- in the slipstream-- to say-- iii. It is the flesh itself that twists to an extreme of mirroring and bends to an absorption of intensity-- to endure the being of the other and then the lack thereof-- as if to leap between and stretch to hold with both tensed reaching hands the here and the not-here in one's own flesh-- and bend to what approximates a reverence, almost religious, or a deep regard, a soul-approaching study of what once was and now is not which is apart from any single utterance or state and is instead a strange estranged absorption a mixed intensity and force the heat of being hurled, hindered, cooled to a contraction-- escaping, inescapable. FROM PART THREE: THE BEAUTY HAS PASSED THROUGH: EKPHRASES (CLICK ART TITLES TO SEE THE ART THAT INSPIRED THESE EKPHRASES) Daily, the Dawn —after Paul Klee's "The Twittering Machine" birdsong and early light the subtle shades the turning crank of time a tree grips this world quietly is able to bring order to the flux with its root structure juices flow upward to the artist passing through him unfolding into visibility the birds reach upward their necks are thinned their tiny feet cling their tiny throats strive the machine turns where is their tree in every direction the elemental realms diverge gathering and conducting from the depths one bird is undone its neck twists its song turns strange the artist, pen in hand, torques himself the beauty has passed through him it is not easy to find one's way in a multidimensional simultaneity the changing light the twittering sound the grip of time the cage of space we involve ourselves we do not grow faint-hearted tiny, the sound great, the effort each dimension evanesces in time now and again we stumble onto a fortunate articulated structure we will have to be very patient holding together the pregnant reverberations until we hear until we see a richly radiating light-- the thing itself-- the dimensions-- the relation-- the difference-- until we know until it knows us the realm of earth and air-- the depth and height-- the work— of art— [Italicized portions of "Daily, the Dawn" are derived through erasure from Paul Klee's "On Modern Art"] Delicate Balance —after the painting by Marjorie Arnett I open the door. The chairs are there, empty, unsteady. A shadow human approaches. That's my self of yesterday. She was here, cast a spell, thought she had a claim. So much is unknown. Does the white dot cloud come from the deep pink slit? Is that where my sex went? Are those my old breasts, niblets with nipples, left on one chair? Is anyone here? Have I got the wrong tone? Have I slipped by mistake on that savage black patch? But no, I haven't dared take one step in. I close the door, breathe outdoor air, turn in a circle. Catch my breath, and turn again. I open the door and see: blue sky between the spindles of the breast-bearing chair, a floating contented sex slit, a table waiting for me. I pick up the niblets with caution. sit on the adequate chair, blow at the white dot cloud. It rises, it hovers, it whispers its message. Inside the Cut Complexity —after Mildred Giddings Burrage's "Untitled" (abstract mica painting) The mind was split & mended Each perception divided into more —Brenda Hillman With disciplined palette the mica clutter built itself, angle over decade, space over time, crosswise and cautious, unreadable until the explosion, off-center, prodigious, lit the intensities, star-shot over all, hard, gemlike, pushing its points into the matrix and a slow large turn over the waters of creation sent new thought spinning, weaving, through the silver void, into the heart. Invitation from beyond the usual circles —after Joan Miro's "Hors du Cercles" ("Outside the Circles") When I woke into the pink dawn I had joyfully left my precious head circling inside an atom as one among many electrons not circling exactly let us say careening like an erotically charged fly bouncing against the room's walls (joyfully don't forget) while I headless floated since in addition to my head I had left the gravity-plagued ground the pink dawn having drawn me upward amid a multitude of delirious not-quite-circling electrons inside atoms green blue red yellow among some less orderly smudges all circling but really not-circling because the trajectories (what a big word for such small bits) were irregular as were the dotted not-lines attempting and achieving despite spaces rather pleasant near-enough connections while floating I met a small figure like myself except this one had a head and lacked the ladder for climbing and escaping I had discovered in the course of the night which had evolved into the pink dawn full of cosmology and messily-structured atoms and a gray ghost with unexpected facial elements (black eyes, eyebrows) and its tiny ghost offspring (see center bottom of the pink dawn world I woke into) come along with me please you have no choice we are all so very welcome. A FEW GOLDEN SHOVELS NOTE: These "golden shovels" are based on lines written by members of The Poets' Table of Belfast, Maine, a disciplined and supportive critique group of women to whom I owe much. Golden shovel: the words of a quote (lines from Poets' Table poems here) become the "end-words" of each line of the golden shovel. So in "And Thusly, Simply" the end-words are "if" "you" "die" "first" "will" (etc). And Thusly, Simply —for Ginny If you die first, will / you still touch me? —Sharon Bray Determination hides inside all reverie and if you enter then, and if you tell me, ruthlessly, that you will die and ruthlessly predict you will go first I'll turn on you and tell you death will be but brief, and courteously demand that you ignore the separation, and plan to dance, still, cell to aging cell and, like the lover you have always been, touch the silver soul of what we'll always be, and thusly, simply, stay with me. Autumn Bucket Beside Dug Well The skin of the petal holds the dirt of life. —Jackie Ascrizzi I almost see the flower in the bucket under a translucent skin of early ice, ghost emblem of fragility, floating source of the ice-caught small white petal which like a sliver of the self holds after death some essence of the rich composted universal dirt and the tiny universal seed of everything we know as life. Bare of Foot and Sore Determined Yet the roots do not // bleed —Judy Kaber If I were a pilgrim seeking a difficult yet enticing god, I would take to the dusty roughened road (hot summer roots exposed in rainless air) and my feet would do a dance of naked adoration and I would beg them not to tire, not to stumble, not to bleed. The Centenarian Speaks this is as far as I can see —Neshama Waller I have walked this road a fair long while. The sun is setting and my steps slow as the years speed up. It seems a far goal, getting to the end, as far as ever anyone—as ever I— might want to walk. I can see now what folks mean. Yes, I can see. Order paperback of Enter Shadow, Enter Light: late-life poems here Order eBook of Enter Shadow, Enter Light: late-life poems here |