The Girl With the Crow’s Eyes
For Sylvie
Was I ever a girl the way she is, studying at the table,
her eyes sliding away from her notebook?
Those untamed eyes lead her to the crow,
its dark, far-seeing eyes.
Her hands obey, then disobey, the open book before her.
Without knowing why she longs to write outside
ruled-lines, off into the margins of space and time,
outside English, opaque mother-tongue
throwing shade the way clouds darken windy days,
concealing foxes, brush rabbits, twin fawns, wild iris.
Wordless things. Deep live things.
The girl-with-crow’s eye
finds them, her hands move to draw them.
Look now. Go on looking, child
without any turning away--
into all the speechless worlds
poised to leave us.
Eighty Autumn Moons
1
Geese cross the eye
the moment when leaving
finds its wings.
In silt in shadow
you will speak with pine boughs softer
than any syllables.
Seed heads of golden rod
soft as rabbit fur but underneath
stiff as bone.
A bloom of dust
passing through time
to write your name.
Clouds set down their crows
beside water, waiting, as if
there’s something more to do.
At dusk the Great Blue Heron
claims a pond rimmed and burning
embers of maple leaves.
2
All those small or immense things
that burned so brightly in your heart
turn to drops/motes of darkness
falling slowly, covering the ground.
You write what you can.
The vision is always present,
But you are not. Try to find
your shadow among the shadows.
Slow the dying cricket nocturne;
hear voices sing back to you.
Egret angels in golden grass --
what you have come for.
Eighty Autumn moons
and have you said enough?
Listen to what pine and cedar say
when no wind stirs.
From Water
This morning I do nothing
but breathe and listen to the sea.
I sink into a watery diamond path,
into a net of light that swallows Islands,
that manes the lion moon fading in the west.
This morning I want to be that place
where outer and inner meet--
the sea inside me, the same
sea that washes my senses
with sun blast and wave crash.
A palm tree whose roots
the waves have laved so the trunk
stretches beyond itself, its spirit,
like mine leaning out over the water
held by elemental color and awe.
Shudder of heron shadow flies over
a depth, a bottomless surface
that seeps everywhere, holding
tonight’s Orion and Cassiopeia,
red frog in Costa Rica,
blue dragonfly, palm tree on the edge–
plovers surrounding pelicans,
herons unrattled by gulls.
Sun casts a constellation on the surface.
Past, present, what’s ahead--
all of it seamless,
a sudden blooming
from rocks and sand,
a tide pool erupting with life--
all of it awash in wild generous light,
our beginning and our end.
Mary Kay Rummel’s ninth poetry book, Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, has recently been published by Blue Light Press. 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. She is Poet Laureate emerita of Ventura County, CA and divides her time between Minneapolis and Ventura.
For Sylvie
Was I ever a girl the way she is, studying at the table,
her eyes sliding away from her notebook?
Those untamed eyes lead her to the crow,
its dark, far-seeing eyes.
Her hands obey, then disobey, the open book before her.
Without knowing why she longs to write outside
ruled-lines, off into the margins of space and time,
outside English, opaque mother-tongue
throwing shade the way clouds darken windy days,
concealing foxes, brush rabbits, twin fawns, wild iris.
Wordless things. Deep live things.
The girl-with-crow’s eye
finds them, her hands move to draw them.
Look now. Go on looking, child
without any turning away--
into all the speechless worlds
poised to leave us.
Eighty Autumn Moons
1
Geese cross the eye
the moment when leaving
finds its wings.
In silt in shadow
you will speak with pine boughs softer
than any syllables.
Seed heads of golden rod
soft as rabbit fur but underneath
stiff as bone.
A bloom of dust
passing through time
to write your name.
Clouds set down their crows
beside water, waiting, as if
there’s something more to do.
At dusk the Great Blue Heron
claims a pond rimmed and burning
embers of maple leaves.
2
All those small or immense things
that burned so brightly in your heart
turn to drops/motes of darkness
falling slowly, covering the ground.
You write what you can.
The vision is always present,
But you are not. Try to find
your shadow among the shadows.
Slow the dying cricket nocturne;
hear voices sing back to you.
Egret angels in golden grass --
what you have come for.
Eighty Autumn moons
and have you said enough?
Listen to what pine and cedar say
when no wind stirs.
From Water
This morning I do nothing
but breathe and listen to the sea.
I sink into a watery diamond path,
into a net of light that swallows Islands,
that manes the lion moon fading in the west.
This morning I want to be that place
where outer and inner meet--
the sea inside me, the same
sea that washes my senses
with sun blast and wave crash.
A palm tree whose roots
the waves have laved so the trunk
stretches beyond itself, its spirit,
like mine leaning out over the water
held by elemental color and awe.
Shudder of heron shadow flies over
a depth, a bottomless surface
that seeps everywhere, holding
tonight’s Orion and Cassiopeia,
red frog in Costa Rica,
blue dragonfly, palm tree on the edge–
plovers surrounding pelicans,
herons unrattled by gulls.
Sun casts a constellation on the surface.
Past, present, what’s ahead--
all of it seamless,
a sudden blooming
from rocks and sand,
a tide pool erupting with life--
all of it awash in wild generous light,
our beginning and our end.
Mary Kay Rummel’s ninth poetry book, Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, has recently been published by Blue Light Press. 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. She is Poet Laureate emerita of Ventura County, CA and divides her time between Minneapolis and Ventura.
