Tag: poetry

In Abstentia

Connor DinnisonLeave a comment

He is not here, you who

See by pink and little light,

His clothes therein discarded, limp—

A smirking stranger too, in white.

He is not here, the eye

Confirms what happened by the night;

The heart however galloping

And speaking without words takes flight.

He is not here, the first

To break the spell of sleep, with bright

Contortions morning tries and comes

And turns to fools the erudite.

He is not here, and yet

He is, incredulous by lens and sight;

He is not here—alas,

He is out bringing low the high and might.

Reaping

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The working man worked 

And drove home

And dwelled a minute on his life

And showered

And dwelled a minute on his life

In blue donegal tweed

And built a drink

In the umber evening light

And reclined on the grass

And dwelled a minute on his life—

He closed an eye

And filled the other with a scene

And fell asleep 

And spilled the cocktail

And his dreams

On his herringbones 

In the long shadow of what is

And never will be his life.

I Want to Live, Pt. 2

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There is something sinister about our sun. It appears sick, its wattage disconcertingly reduced, its glory redacted and smeared. It is, in its infirmity, not itself. And from its lofty perch it broadcasts a mien of exasperation that is mirrored in the faces below. We, too, are not well. Our lungs are pierced by twin maladies, our hearts unsettled by portentous events. The whole ordeal reeks of a cosmic coup.

Yesterday was Sunday, the last day of summer—school, in some strange incarnation, begins today for the city’s children—and our second on a Jovian moon. The atmosphere—experts tell us, and our noses confirm—is hazardous, and so we have submitted to house arrest. Our villain, of course, is the smoke of wildfires, a herculean dose of it, which has settled like boiling water into a bowl on top of us. It is a deluge. Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the “greate fyshe.” Perhaps tomorrow God will take pity on us.

The defiant few who venture out into it look miserable, their movements conservative and deliberate, koi at the bottom of a frigid pond. The rest of us, in our own climatized fishbowls, must elicit a similar impression—one of not only tousles and stubble, but resignation. We have made a meal of it this year, haven’t we? Still, through plague and terrorism, acts of God (or misfortune, stupidity, astrological prophecy, have your pick) and the dissolution of normalcy into an off-piste Huxleyan parody—next stop, the Church of Belial!—we do sit-ups, send flowers, make the bed. “This is not panache,” C. S. Lewis rightly observed. “It is our nature.” We are always on the threshold of Thermopolis—only of late do we seem to notice the glow. 

Widespread haze (and havoc) is forecast for the rest of the week (and the Anthropocene); there will be no imminent escape from our Monstro, after all. I think of the songbirds, without air conditioning, baffled and shushed by this poisonous brown fog. I think of the gardeners who cannot find respite, even in the shade. Every leaf is still. I pray for a little wind. 

And I think of Christ’s triumph on the cross, presaging ours, with the help of a sonnet by Malcolm Guite:

And now he comes to breathe beneath the pall

Of our pollutions, draw our injured air

To cleanse it and renew. His final breath

Breathes us, and bears us through the gates of death. (11-14)

Note: Please visit malcolmguite.wordpress.com for more information on the poet and his work.

11th & Cherry

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Snow fall and

Night

Two women in a doorway

Talking

The feeling of possibility

Receding images

Houses and idle cars

Merging with old growth

Bric-a-brac and black stray

Cats

The silent conspiracy 

Of snow

And pooling lamplight

Clarity

Fragments of jazz

Night

Milk white

Distant engines

Revving

The sensation of being

On a verge.

August ’89

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I walked 

Into the past

To tidy it up—

In search of explanations.

It looked and smelled

Like a living grave

Of the misremembered, 

Looted and squirming.

I looked for a path

And peace,

For youth and home, 

But found them shattered—

Caked with lies

And warm debris,

Lost dogs,

The stuff of dreams,

Of whores and kings—

Scattered and sad.

I saw and heard

The jewels

Of Tutankhamen clinking

In the teeth

Of laughing children.

Homecomer

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My brother and his wife welcomed into their lives a baby girl mere days before Thanksgiving. If ever there was an occasion to give thanks, this was it. I wrote this poem—in a parking lot, hundreds of miles away, on the eve of her birth—for the little soul whose presence has already blessed our family with so much light, and for myself, as a reminder: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (New International Version, Matt. 6.21).

Winter’s tree with branches bare,

Retracting from a splendor,

Into slumber and thin air—

The coup complete by mid-November.

Night and shadow victors both,

Their reign is but a pregnant pause

In God’s eternal will to growth,

Take spring, his gift, and love, his cause.

Hoarding life until high time

To shudder, sanctify, give birth—

Begins again to pantomime

The fearless jig that spins the earth,

And welcomes in from out the cold

A foil for a calloused heart,

Delivered into crease and fold,

Conjoining what was once apart. 

Marching Orders

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To be free and out of doors—

Under wings, above the floors

Of faux linoleum and lint,

Knee-high in wild sage and mint,

Carousing memories impress

upon—a rausch, resplendent eveningness

Uncanny umbers, graven greens

I see but don’t know what they mean.

To eat this planet with an eye

As day and night entwine in sky,

How hours drift like vagabonds

From me to sweeter echelons,

For soon the beasts nocturnal ride

Insisting I return inside,

At once content and mourning changes

Comes the end and rearranges.

I was summer, holding fast—

The fool of youth—I could not last,

For here we grovel before Death

Awaiting the next baby’s breath

To break the spell of dreamless slumber,

Woe to she who holds us under

Rock and root—I smell the sun—

Oh, welcome light! Our prize, hard won.

Image: Monet, Claude. Path Under the Rose Arches. 1918-24.

Construction Management

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By tolling bells and pointed spires,

Cities born by my desires,

Slender towers, glades and gleams—

I’ve been here once before in dreams,

Where every cornice conjures scenes

Of peasants, mystics, in-betweens,

In steeples old abominations

Shadow new transfigurations

Rising from a misty bog

Into heavens eyes agog,

From earth and wood to heights divine,

My vision’s lure is by design—

To house a people and its keep,

My heart is building while I sleep.

Outside the City Walls

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Moonfall in a crown of thorns—

A horrid death its chill forewarns,

Still merrily its minions grope

For irons and a length of rope,

And melt their hands on glowing coals,

Their gaze upon a place of skulls,

In want of night to hide the fear

Of innocence they’ve fettered here—

Humiliated, flogged with shame,

The brutes don’t even know His name

Or shudder when in pain He cries,

But not to curse or criticize—

“Forgive them, please” is what He said,

These servants of the living dead,

Beholden to His blood and dust,

To dust, for everlasting life, they must

Condemn the stranger, hang Him high—

Then truth will have eclipsed the lie.

Image: Caravaggio. The Flagellation of Christ (detail). 1610.

Labor and Delivery

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I am an age-old thing—

Behold! the hermit king.

Alone I dwell in humble lairs

My hours spent composing prayers,

Minute and monolithic works

Within which doubts and longings lurk.

To be a vessel of true love,

The tree that feeds and shades the dove,

In seeking mercy and His face

I fast and sing, repent, replace

My heart of stone with flame and flesh,

Tin armor for a porous mesh.

The better to become a sieve

And covet not how others live,

But wander solitary, die—

Inside and out a passerby.