“……………But mine is darker,
slanted, nitrous blue at the root,
an acrostic of what is
most free and
far.” ~ Joanna Klink, from “Aubade”
Tuesday late morning, cloudy and humid, 80 degrees.
It’s interesting living in a house during the summer without an air conditioner. It would be impossible in Norfolk, where the summer humidity hovers between 90 and 100 percent. But it’s not bad here, except when doing something physical, like cleaning. Then it becomes impossible. Nevertheless, I like the fact that we’re not adding to global warming even though that’s not why we don’t have AC.
Unfortunately, I’m still not venturing outside much except to help Corey milk Penny the goat. We don’t have a milking stand, so I hold her and soothe her as he milks, and when I come back inside, I am covered in bites. Once we have a stand, the whole milking process should improve. It will be good when the pasture is finally divided and fenced so that I can reclaim the front yard from the animals. Truly, it looks as if a barnyard out there, and there is no escape from the no-seeums that plague my body with bites.
Today’s poems are by American poet Joanna Klink. Both are entitled “The Graves.” I have included links to the sites on which I found the poems. I love the following passage in which Klink talks about why she writes poes:
“In poems I am trying to find my bearings through a world that at times feels remote and inchoate and struck blank with noise. I would like to place myself in a field of deep attention, and out of that attention come to feel and regard with more acute understanding what is there. I write to be less hopelessly myself, to sense something more expansive than where I speak from.”
The Graves
Wind for your sickness.
The moon for your sickness.
…….A river of night-
…….trees. Mossy patches
where something recently slept.
A hand-drawn sketch of
fish for your sickness,
…….red and ghost-
…….loamed. From your mother,
for your sickness, a late
flock of snow-geese
swept up in a gust.
…….From your father, a cave
…….of violas in luminous
…….pitch. For the panic
desolation. For scratchy bed-
sheets, the gathering of tumors,
a dispensation traveling in
…….far-nesses across the
…….galaxy-quiet of what is
to come. Dark-sunned,
you are swimming in schools.
…….For the despairing quality of
…….hospital fluorescence,
the secondhand alarm—
theft of time theft of
…….hope. The messages
…….arrive like flowers.
For the common un-
contested light of dusk.
For tobacco moths
…….in clouds of wings at
…….the door. For the dawn-
emotion, a calm-in-vastness
that descends upon
what is. Upon the storm-
…….tangle of branches, wing-
…….veins and hand-veins
…….shadow-shown on that pale
skin of sky. Too stone for
fear. Too brittle for
…….findings. From the powers that,
…….born on the site of sorrow,
fall in strands of smoke
across your sickness,
for your sickness,
…….and carry and keep you.
…….That would keep you here.
~ Joanna Klink (Found on Chonicle of Higher Education)
The Graves
~ Joanna Klink (Found on Poetry Foundation)
Music by Leelou, “Don’t You Forget about Me”
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 