Still Here
Stained concrete, strewn trash --
let me love this world too.
Sometimes I want to choose exile,
like Neruda writing deep
in trackless forest, smuggling poems to beloveds
in hand sewn pouches on the backs of horses…
But I am still here. My ears can’t abandon the cardinals.
Here because the doe and her fawns are ghosts
in moonlight, rising from the grass to eat my flowers.
Because raw almonds and raspberries taste
like earth, because their names weigh less than
wind on my tongue
Because my body behind walls forgets how to live --
I am one oak left standing, my dark
branches almost sleeping under stars
drowned in steel blue streetlight.
Still here. Why am I here?
Because this morning they arrived…
scores of yellow dragonflies who never gathered
here before—crackling air, darting fire--
lightning in concert
over asphalt parking lot, shattered glass, falling
branches tangled power lines… this world too.
Hope in All Things
After Spem in Alium, (Hope in all Things) by Thomas Tallis
I remember how the heavy doors
opened into a great silence.
At the base of each arch in the gothic chapel
a singer waited until one voice, bell-like,
began the Tallis melody.
An alto joined, then another voice, forty voices
gathered in the clarity of the round,
until the song crested
in a wave rising to the vaulted ceiling.
From music I learned how hope inhabits sounds,
the way cricket-throb scree-slides over miles of air.
My ears ring for a moment in answer to the fox
prowling the ridge of Anacapa Island.
I still listen for hope in what surrounds:
the four sounds of the ocean--
beneath the train, the drum, the rain-stick
sift of water, a high singing.
The quiet transparent shape of rain in drought
opens a salt-rusted door.
A call from a deep center opens--
like the passage between rocks on Anacapa--
music on the knife edge of the world
space where hope grows.
in this place every door opens
to the sound of singing--
each voice brushing against,
ringing the bells of another.
In unencumbered air it is possible to hear
another language—a crescendo—tide gold
as the island boat rides out, flickering
on the eternal round of sea.
Prelude
New Zealand, Coromandel Penninsula
Between twisting rows of Pohutukawa
that crack cliff faces with roots,
turn stone beaches scarlet with blossoms,
three of us travel North of Covill
stop at the End of the Road cafe
for food, having found nothing last night.
It’s open and thundering with wave crash.
No smile softens the cook’s ragged face,
wrinkles that read, a long journey here.
Because Pam will drive anywhere,
we ignore the sign that says,
DRIVE ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Braving washboard dirt and rock,
we wind up mountain to Coromandel’s tip.
There, in hill pastures, our footsteps
send wild turkeys, quail and pheasant
into flight above a coast of rock and bush.
On the beach Pam and I rest against granite.
Tim’s camera follows a sting-ray
toward the outline of a small island
where a friend once lived with missionaries.
Two magpies study us humans talking,
unlikely friends come together across
a winter continent and fifteen hours of sea.
A wild happiness — this knowing
the moment is one of those that have waited
millions of years, through geological aeons,
colonizations, changes in climate, votes
of no confidence to occur— an end of island,
end of journey, end of year eruption
of hope in the heart.
To know the summer in winter,
to see more clearly boats held by the sea,
blown cloud stacks held by summer sky,
summer sky held by this great longing.
We have held what we can; it’s time to empty
our sacks in the Pacific and begin again.
Mary Kay Rummel’s ninth poetry book, Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, has been recently published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco. Her first book, This Body She’s Entered, won a Minnesota Voices Award from New Rivers Press. The Lifeline Trembles won the Blue Light Award from Blue Light Press and Love in the End was a chapbook award winner from Bright Hill Press. She is co-editor of Psalms of Cinder & Silt, poems about experiences with fires in California (Solo Novo Press). Mary Kay has read her poems in many venues in the US, England and Ireland. She is a Poet Laureate emerita of Ventura County, CA.
Stained concrete, strewn trash --
let me love this world too.
Sometimes I want to choose exile,
like Neruda writing deep
in trackless forest, smuggling poems to beloveds
in hand sewn pouches on the backs of horses…
But I am still here. My ears can’t abandon the cardinals.
Here because the doe and her fawns are ghosts
in moonlight, rising from the grass to eat my flowers.
Because raw almonds and raspberries taste
like earth, because their names weigh less than
wind on my tongue
Because my body behind walls forgets how to live --
I am one oak left standing, my dark
branches almost sleeping under stars
drowned in steel blue streetlight.
Still here. Why am I here?
Because this morning they arrived…
scores of yellow dragonflies who never gathered
here before—crackling air, darting fire--
lightning in concert
over asphalt parking lot, shattered glass, falling
branches tangled power lines… this world too.
Hope in All Things
After Spem in Alium, (Hope in all Things) by Thomas Tallis
I remember how the heavy doors
opened into a great silence.
At the base of each arch in the gothic chapel
a singer waited until one voice, bell-like,
began the Tallis melody.
An alto joined, then another voice, forty voices
gathered in the clarity of the round,
until the song crested
in a wave rising to the vaulted ceiling.
From music I learned how hope inhabits sounds,
the way cricket-throb scree-slides over miles of air.
My ears ring for a moment in answer to the fox
prowling the ridge of Anacapa Island.
I still listen for hope in what surrounds:
the four sounds of the ocean--
beneath the train, the drum, the rain-stick
sift of water, a high singing.
The quiet transparent shape of rain in drought
opens a salt-rusted door.
A call from a deep center opens--
like the passage between rocks on Anacapa--
music on the knife edge of the world
space where hope grows.
in this place every door opens
to the sound of singing--
each voice brushing against,
ringing the bells of another.
In unencumbered air it is possible to hear
another language—a crescendo—tide gold
as the island boat rides out, flickering
on the eternal round of sea.
Prelude
New Zealand, Coromandel Penninsula
Between twisting rows of Pohutukawa
that crack cliff faces with roots,
turn stone beaches scarlet with blossoms,
three of us travel North of Covill
stop at the End of the Road cafe
for food, having found nothing last night.
It’s open and thundering with wave crash.
No smile softens the cook’s ragged face,
wrinkles that read, a long journey here.
Because Pam will drive anywhere,
we ignore the sign that says,
DRIVE ON AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Braving washboard dirt and rock,
we wind up mountain to Coromandel’s tip.
There, in hill pastures, our footsteps
send wild turkeys, quail and pheasant
into flight above a coast of rock and bush.
On the beach Pam and I rest against granite.
Tim’s camera follows a sting-ray
toward the outline of a small island
where a friend once lived with missionaries.
Two magpies study us humans talking,
unlikely friends come together across
a winter continent and fifteen hours of sea.
A wild happiness — this knowing
the moment is one of those that have waited
millions of years, through geological aeons,
colonizations, changes in climate, votes
of no confidence to occur— an end of island,
end of journey, end of year eruption
of hope in the heart.
To know the summer in winter,
to see more clearly boats held by the sea,
blown cloud stacks held by summer sky,
summer sky held by this great longing.
We have held what we can; it’s time to empty
our sacks in the Pacific and begin again.
Mary Kay Rummel’s ninth poetry book, Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, has been recently published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco. Her first book, This Body She’s Entered, won a Minnesota Voices Award from New Rivers Press. The Lifeline Trembles won the Blue Light Award from Blue Light Press and Love in the End was a chapbook award winner from Bright Hill Press. She is co-editor of Psalms of Cinder & Silt, poems about experiences with fires in California (Solo Novo Press). Mary Kay has read her poems in many venues in the US, England and Ireland. She is a Poet Laureate emerita of Ventura County, CA.