A Day Late

The Language by Robert Creeley : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Winter: Haiku and Oddments

Thickness of white.
Only a dark uncertain line divides
white sky from white.

*

Behind thick snow
cars, houses, valleys, branches:
wrapped up like secrets.

*

 wit wit! and sickle! 
do ti sol: arrows
streak tree to tree
fierce lyrics, to a drip
a drip a drip
of melting snow

so, wing and throat
warblers, warbirds,
fleet and sing
advance, retreat:
dance (wit wit! then sickle!)
tree to tree.

*


Snow blows in, starved. Eats
outlines: no trees no road
no tracks no path.Only
snow remembers them: full now,
snow grins (white teeth): oh,
snow knows!

on the way home, mom starts talking

I'm finished, mom says. Her eyes
focus, calm, on the road.
Things have to change. I'm changing
them. I can't wait on his
what
when
how --

Outside us cars slide
by, blind machines. I've never seen her,
this woman who knows.
I'm forty-five, she says. I've learned a lot.
She drives.

It's true: she knows,
she's sure. I feel it in me
a square strange organ, newgrown.
X ray it, unknown flesh
of my own flesh:
i need a new readout.

Her sureness settles in
at home beneath my ribbones,
presses, heavy
in my chest.
I push
i breathe.

Breathe.
I am breathing, crying:
i am (newmarried into womanhood)
too old
Too old to learn
this way to be.

Beside me this woman now, somehow,
my mother, she keeps
driving down the road.
She is sure and
not silent.
She says: I've finally begun,
I'm beginning,
I'm getting started.

A Sonnet

Those wasted years--the years you grieve,
poured out in bitterness, so many barren showers--
Don't grieve them, but be still. Those seed-
truths you heard and buried, and thought drowned--
Beneath unhope, softly, those Words uncurled
themselves. Spun silver tendrils: tender green
trusts that only now seek out the world,
unwind into shy threads, still tightleaved
and half translucent. See how, tentative,
yet growing bolder, into every hour
now golden they unfold themselves. They live,
they thrive, they leaf out. Believe that they will flower
into full fruiting, every bitter pip of grief
matured to a ripe sweetness of belief.

The Skunk

Walking up to the trap, he was striking, in the grey thicket.
Up close his fur was glorious. Luxurious.
It might have made a woman's hat. A queen's robe--
ermine reversed, argent on sable. But he wore his skin
for everyday: it was mudstreaked, stained around his feet.
Already the blood was caking brown, another mudspot 
marking the bullet's invasion of his tiny brain.
Oh, he had a wicked little head, pointed to his nose,
like a weasel, or a miniature bear. Such a pretty,
wicked little head,
and that dainty mouth
full of needle teeth and meatsmell.
My brother says skunks are clever beasts,
like foxes. This one had a clever face, but his black eyes
by then, looked only dead.
Already the stink of his panic was fading.
We tied his feet, like little hands, with a plastic cord
i carried him an armlength away from me
as the smell faded,
and we walked home together, Ben with his .22 and the trapping bag,
and me, and the dead skunk,
such a little weight.

snowfall

Heavy with intent snow flakes float down
to lose their featherselves into
a boundless, a soundless white. What gentleness
what heaviness
to press the chilly ground
cover the spikedead grass
fill the hills, the small hollows
Snow filling shallows, filling all the valleys
with tenderness
relentless
Snow falls
like a mother's hand,
kind
heavy
silences the land

Blue

i thought i left you
but you came running on behind
you witch, you fishhook, bitch
ten mile journey and i find,
i find
can't get you fishhook,
get you
unhooked from out my mind

fishhook was a woman, good god
she was fine
silver woman, silver
she was silver in my mind

fishhook was a woman, she was
less than flesh and bone,
witch
witch
fishhook, won't you
leave a poor girl alone

i said farewell fishhook, i'm leaving you behind
i had to turn and take a look
now you're burning like a pillar in my mind

fishhook on my pillow
fishhook by my side
i beat that witch with willow sticks (lord, i was weak!)
i beat that witch with willow sticks
til i like to died

i said farewell fishhook, leave
my poor mouth alone,
i said i'm leaving fishhook
poor girl,
i want my home
i said, i'm coming mama, and
on my own.

i thought i left you
but you came running on behind
you witch, you fishook, bitch
ten mile journey and i find

i find
can't get you fishhook, get you
unhooked from out my mind

fishhook was a woman
and good god she was fine
silver woman, silver
silver fishhook in my mind
lord, a girl stuck on a fishhook
you know she's got to die