mother of multitudes
succulent
soft orange blooms,
desert under glass
conservatory,
cradling the baby’s head
holding her up
to see
a leaf
bigger than we are
out in the soft rain
old friends might walk
on a winding path by a pond
and suddenly catch
the flight
of a blue heron
***
Photo by Devon Miller Duggan, Longwood
Isabel Winson-Sagan and I collaborated for a week last October at Wildacres in North Carolina. She’s been working hard to get text and image to combine harmoniously as part of a book project. I love what she is coming up with.
Backyard mosaic by Devon Miller-Duggan
From our (temporarily) foreign correspondent, Isabel Winson-Sagan
Recipe (receipt, conceit):
(on dry ground)
let fall a leaf (fading, serrated, lightly browned)
let fall a fine rain (sifted)
let rise and fall again
a breath of soft air
leave to rest.
Poet Michael G. Smith snapped this visual haiku:
He says: A dog sharing his dog biscuit with a sparrow outside the Downtown Subscription yesterday. Very sweet bird, too. This one likes to sit on people’s laps.
Lithic
stone wood
I come across a barn in the field
the sculptor
is building the tenth version
of shale and stump
all the rest have collapsed…
it is all about the balance
wood can petrify but stone cannot grow
boulder pulverized to pebble
schist colored with ferric oxide
and floating bones with teeth
fossilized
new mountains from old rock
domed
dolmen
cirques and horns
like gravestone
or what can be
quarried
from the glacial erratic
shale that breaks along parallel points, fissility
composed of mud, quartz, calcite
a covered bridge
a caul, a veil, purdah
a pocketless shroud
without knots
or buttons
how death is public, a final
resting place
Puritans with their unadorned
death heads
a burying ground
not next to any church
a cairn can mark a trail
record a visit
to memorialize a spot
this earth is metamorphic
for what is not?
Poem inspired by the gallery show GROWTH UNDER PRESSURE, Salem Art Works, NY July, 2014.
Enjoy! I will be posting full text and explanation next.
The Half-Buried Bowl. Public art on a trail to a ruined pueblo, Cortez, Colorado.
Swimming in Reykjavik
I traveled a long way
to sit and knit in bed
beneath a white comforter.
raindrops on the window
obscured the red corrugated roof
the dark blue facade
trimmed in burgundy.
light of the north
filled the art deco hall
that houses
enormous swimming pools.
dreamlike, we were almost alone
except for the bossy attendant
and a lifeguard
giving a small boy
a swimming lesson.
on the roof, a violent wind–
hot water rushing
down the staircase
warmed our feet
and a man with a hairy back
soaked in a hot pot Celsius.
the knitting yarn was gayly
green and orange
not from Icelandic sheep–
let’s be honest–
but from Hobby Lobby
at home.
each stitch made meaning
out of the whitecaps on the harbor,
showed how the sea
makes a pass at the land
like a too bold
pick-up in a bar.
you were still sleeping
in a nap
that trailed all the way
from North America.
I traveled a long way
to have you look
like a child again
and ask me for an apple.
Here’s the link to Amazon Kindle for SWIMMING TO REYKJAVIK http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Reykjavik-Miriam-Sagan-ebook/dp/B00JQNGP60/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1397749162&sr=1-1&keywords=miriam+sagan
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 