Friday night we celebrated communion and poetry together, and here are the poems that I shared.
Pleasant Hill, MO
by Jennifer Addis
There is a foresty green tile in the bathroom
I will always remember-
I hid there from a pack of wild dogs one afternoon;
It was a long day in September.
I will always remember
ridges on the arched metal barn roof
It was a long day in September
as I perched atop the barn and saw a bull lose his hoof.
Ridges on the arched metal barn roof
Reminded me of corn cob kernel lines
as I perched atop the barn and saw a bull lose his hoof-
a routine chore done with those long steel tines.
Reminded of corn cob kernel lines,
Mom divided up the dinner meat in that old white house-
a routine chore done with those long steel tines,
and Dad unhitched the plows.
Mom divided up the dinner meat in that old white house-
I hid there from a pack of wild dogs one afternoon
and Dad unhitched the plows.
There is a foresty green tile in the bathroom.
SIGHT AND TOUCH
for Balthus
by Octavio Paz
The light holds them - weightless, real -
the white hill and the black oaks,
the path that runs on,
the tree that remains;
the rising light seeks its way,
a wavering river that sketches
its doubts and turns them to certainties,
a river of dawn across closed eyes;
the light sculpts the wind in the curtains,
makes each hour a living body,
comes into the room and slips off,
slipperless, along the edge of a knife;
the light creates woman in a mirror,
naked under the diaphanous leaves,
a glance can enchain her,
she vanishes with a blink;
the light touches the fruit, touches the invisible,
a pitcher for the eyes to drink clarity,
a clipped flower of flame, a sleepless candle
where the butterfly with black wings burns:
the light smoothes the creases in the sheets
and the folds of puberty,
it smolders in the fireplace, its flames shadows
that climb the walls like yearning ivy;
the light does not absolve or condemn,
it is neither just nor unjust,
the light with invisible hands constructs
the buildings of symmetry;
the light goes off through a path of reflections
and comes back to itself:
a hand that invents itself, an eye
that sees itself in its own inventions.
Light is time thinking about itself.
