Dear heart, the rain dresses all
in changeling colors: leaves that molt—
part celadon, part yellow— then turn pewter
where they drift on water and water reflects them
back as shimmer. New leaves, parchment-thin:
they’ve shaken off their flimsy tethers; and it’s not
even the season for leaving. Everything is just
beginning. Or beginning again. Every day,
the air thickens with shadow, with shape, with
odor. My hands bear the smells of mint, the stains
of verbena. The skin on my back remembers
when last it was touched. Sometimes I teach it
to grow colder. Sometimes even the smallest
flush of color reverses, like a wayward fever.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- Letter to Implacable Things
- Landscape, with Cave and Lovers
- Miniatures
- Letter to Self, Somewhere Other than Here
- Ghazal with a Few Variations
- Letter to Silence
- Landscape, with Returning Things
- Postcard to Grey
- Not Yet There
- Letter to the Street Where I Grew Up (City Camp Alley, Baguio City)
- Between
- Parable of Sound
- Letter to Providence
- Glint
- The Beloved Asks
- Letter to Longing
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Twenty Questions
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Interlude
- Villanelle of the Red Maple
- Salutation
- Letter to Love
- Letter to Fortune
- Territories
- Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
- Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Singing Bowl
- [temporarily removed by author]
- Risen
- Refrain
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Letter to Leaving or Staying
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Like the Warbler
- Landscape with Carillon
- Letter to Ardor
- Landscape, with Salt and Rain at Dawn
- Marks
- Landscape, with Sunlight and Bits of Clay
- Slaying the Beast
- Measures
- In a Hotel Lobby, near Midnight
- Landscape with Shades of Red
- Between the Acts
- Letter to Duty
- Letter to Nostalgia
- You
- Song of Work
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
- Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent
Luisa, that is a wonderful response! Really like this little package of changeling colors and waywardness.
Thanks Marly! I am liking the “Letter” poems and the “Landscape” poems coming out of this daily engagement. :) What will you be doing in Wales?
Yes, I am liking these as well.
Wales? Dave is going too! It will be funny to meet there, when we aren’t hugely far away, as distances go in the states.
We are going over for the 60th birthday retrospective painting show of Clive Hicks-Jenkins at the National Library of Wales. Two books are being launched, one a book of essays called “Clive Hicks-Jenkins” from Lund Humphries (only I am ill-behaved and have a chapter that is not an essay but a lot of fictional pieces, including one faux-biblical piece–mostly about the paintings but one very much about Clive.) The other is called “The Book of Ystwyth,” and is an anthology of six poets responding to Clive’s work–me, Dave, Andrea Selch, Damian Walford Davies, the late Catriona Urquhart, and Callum James. I’ll have at least one poem on tape at the retrospective (have not done more as yet), and we’ll all do a poetry reading at the university the night before the opening. Should be splendiferous. I’m also planning to meet up with novelist Clare Dudman one day… Adventures will happen, I am sure.