POETRY BY MYSELF

 

JOSEPH WARD

 

PI and Poetry

Ever wonder what a poem is?

I said to friends once that poems are like a round plate, with pi on it,

a very odd kind of circle  -

not the kind of pie on a plate you try to slice to just the right thinness

that will satisfy guests without making them burp, and later you

find that last slice hiding in the back of the refrigerator beyond

that old jar of pickles you just never throw away, but the kind of pi

that’s unsliceable but multiplies the ordinary square of anything

it touches, even words,

into something perfect.

I misspoke.  Poems are more like the pi. The circles are

those curious words in your head crowding in to raise questions,

like, are you transcendent

 or just being irrational, or,

what comes after the final line?  Pi,

3.14159…, seems such a plain thing, like the engineer’s e,

2.71828…. Remember logarithms to the base e?

I didn’t think so.

The important part is the …. Can one summarize pi plus e?  They both wend

on and on.  It would take forever, like entering and summarizing

two separate worlds, a Spring sonnet and

a Wintry haiku, impossible to do all at once.

An entering?

Is that what a poem is?

SKY SONGS

On reading Ezra Pound

Mad Ezra sang of white-breasted birds, frozen

like half-notes on a staff of power lines.

He’s above

mere copper wire and feathers,

unaware of their  uncertain peeps or of

the throaty pulse that anticipates

Fortissimos!  His music’s of the spheres.

At such a height the swoops and falls of birds

are mute, considerable only to a caring God;

 

While I, poor earthbound badger looking up,

exult at birds in flight, grace notes

against the clouds, wheeling,

clamoring chains of melodies

that have no staff or measure

save my delight. 

Clearing Trash

In the distance, larks trace  Arabic

poetry on a green scroll of  willows.

Daffodils, in the drizzle of this hesitant Spring,

protest with yellow flags for sunlight. Soft earth 
insinuates fragrances to passing doves.

Amid this dancing, this impetuosity,

My soul sees broken things, abandoned nests,

branches carelessly dropped by passing storms,

pools of muddy oak leaves quenching

new grass, winter’s  shattered brown
fragments of vanished summer.

Encircled by ecstasy,

remembering flutes breathing
from broken reeds, harmonies

from dry wood and cat gut, a prayer

wheel of robins in a nest of twigs, 
my ancient soul throws open Winter’s doors.  

Unrelenting joy engulfs me; I drown,

And am reborn.

WINTER BLOSSOMS

Sometimes, in the frost,

 roses bloom, red, white, fragrance

reaching toward Spring.

My Blood’s Not Ink

A response to Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”

My blood’s not ink that’s dried upon some page

Five hundred years away, but sings this day

With quickening joy, or sighs or bursts with rage

That will not wait Time’s glance. No love of May

Am I whose life rests only in the shade

Your fame provides. My heart has seasons bright

Or drear or dark whence heats or chills are made

Upon my whim, not yours. You think your light

Enough to feed me through the years. I dine

Most well on beef nor quench my thirst with rhyme.

My face and form will change though love doth shine

Most true. I need thee not in some far time.

Some future age you then may take your bow.

We play not on that distant stage, but now.

SONNETS FOR GINGER

No. 4

Pardon me please, that I confuse the Moon

With you, who brighter shine and longer glow

Undimmed. They say that flowers grow most soon

When planted in the Moon’s full light. We know

Plainly then why fresh blossoms round you crowd

In March and in autumn not wilt but stay

Unfaded, and why, like tides, my heart is bowed

When you are far and leaps most high the day

That you return. So too the Moon is drawn

By Earth In circle nor does either flee

the other’s night. Moon sighs at each new dawn,

And Earth because its Moon it does not see.

Each still holds the other though times are bright

Or dark.  For each, the other is their light.

CATHAY

Now we are old, and on a wintry day

beside the fire  recall our pilgrimage,

and laugh and mourn at steps along the way.

Setting out, we sought Cathay - to catch and cage

The sweet nightingale of joy, gather gold

And fame, grow gardens where our love could roam,

Explore Xanadu, transform the world, and bold,

Triumphant, Cathay found, arrive back home.

We’ve reached our Cathay now, and though

It’s stranger than the place we sought, its land’s

Much nearer to the heart. Our to and fro

Has woven our souls together, and our hands.

No more we search to find the nightingale sweet,

Cathay’s become the place where our hands meet.

  

Of Sagas and Such

                                                For Dr. Floyd Lear

Apple-cheeked from the morning sprint

through hedgerows, silver froth of hair 

shining in the sleepy sunlight of the hall,

he rang ancient Irish history like a bell.

The secret of the Irish Sagas, he exclaimed,

lapsing from his tales of  white-cloaked wanderings

 and Brendan’s wondrous dinner on a whale,

the secret is that their journeys never end. Wrapt

in magical music, those ancient travelers forget

to arrive, so full of joy are they in journeying.

Today my love and I rove aimlessly,

looking for a path. She knows

in bones and blood where dragons wait

and how unwary travelers meet grief,

and that there is no pleasure like the sigh

at the last lane leading home. Love’s burdens

weigh heavily until she’s placed them safe.

She’s confident of this street and that,

but wary of the longer  ways, health

and stock markets and grandchildren,

and I remember  him, leaping

over hedges to resume voyages he knew

would never end, singing incantations to heal

a hurt and sense the future, and as my  love

thinks carefully of  hazards and of highways, my eyes

explore hedge roses and jonquils, lilacs drifting

on green swales, and flowering peach and skies

disrobing from wintry grey

and I sing.

On Viewing Eduoard Vuillard’s “Two Women Drinking Coffee”

  

  They’ve thrown aside the cloth,
bright quilted flowers, patterned trees;
They’re lost within
the clutter of familiar room.
One turns, to contemplate?
 The other is assured, content
the pot will fill and flow.
Her goal’s precision, the perfect pour
 from china into china, Eternal Now’s
 of aromatic steam, no thought,
just memory, a lover’s smile, the warmth.

Why are these gossips’ common tongues
locked in this silent place
that opens only to other silences?  

The artist gives no hint,

leaving me to tiptoe

past the hush and wonder

how he dares bind  strangers

to such  loneliness.

Where Are the Clowns?

                                                         For Lynn Mayer
 Sunset spills a blazing bowl of indigo

clouds, a  splashy show, across October

blue skies to warn of  approaching cold,

the first graceful entrance of  autumn.

I shiver, lightly, it’s only fall, anticipating

more reckless abandonments, falling

leaves, cacophonous geese heading south,

smoking air, squirrels scurrying like stage hands

clearing away summer for the main event.

 We’re driving home from Lynn’s funeral and it’s hard,

Knowing  how he would have enjoyed the show,

how he would have jumped into the piles, cheering

the way he cheered kids at their games, natural

enthusiast, pretending to search for elephants

in the leaves, recalling camels like the one-eyed one

his father, a Barnum & Bailey man, brought

home to dinner one night.  Lynn laughed his way

through tales that couldn’t hide the art 
of  his cart-wheeling, nonsense-scattering

entrances into the everyday spotlight of his trade.

He taught living like a clown, always in disguise,

pretending it was just History, or Fine Art, or

heading the ball into the goal. Sometimes

it was citizenship, juggling opposites, dazzling

kids while reminding adults of visions

they’d left behind.

Ah, Lynn, twinkle-toes, you would have pratfalled

your way through Michelangelo and Madison and Mays

into the  millenium, except for that early hook

that dragged you, slowly, excruciatingly, out of the ring,

you mugging all the while - after all, it had to be your

Big Chance, the top circuit, hurry hurry  comeandgetyourticket,

the really big brass band, tumbling seraphim, The Works! -

you were that good!

Now we’re waiting for our circuses to resume, anticipating

fireworks! - the show must go on - isn’t that what living’s all about?

You taught us that.

Where are the clowns?

             Non-Solid Geometry

             For Ethel Rummery

 She’s given up solid planes

and angles, that  flat stretch

of summer road reaching

to Ohio, the sharp swerve

onto the driveway

 of the house where she taught

her children, and theirs.

The edge of dawn in February,

even the circle of old

friends, chatting as they wait

for dinner, is memory .The parlor

where they sang,

too many weary  turns

away.  Distances

have vanished,

and cold;  she roasts

in the hatchery of  her apartment

as she grows into

her egg, shrinking

each day, absorbing

 body into narrowing space,

stretching

to the vanishing point, until

she cracks her shell and emerges

into infinity. 

A Raggedy Sonnet to my Wife

 I pray that fragrant jasmine and bright stock,
impatiens and slight primrose in their turn

shatter petals, that slumbering beeches burn
saffron on a sparkling frost, that weary hollyhocks
droop on deserted  walls, and bleak old oaks
shiver in brown mantles under snowy cloaks.

Each year I yearn to watch spring’s blossoming,

and hear autumn’s winds begin to sing.

In all save love, the solid world must know
its grace in limits, all flowers cease to grow. 

Only in our love’s garden should we tend

Timeless roses, and summer never end.

For there, however years may write our face,

Eternity has knelt down and blessed a space.