Monday, October 13, 2014

Four poems ----- Ann Reitan


In Mind's Eye

Through my dull green
Paned window
I observe a home
That fissures a line
Within me, a horizon
Beyond dim daylight

Thoughts evoke
The flesh, blood interiors
Of this home
In my mind’s eye

Perhaps it’s suppertime,
Perhaps a family is
Giving thanks,
Before partaking
In stuffing bellies

Like blind men
Seeking nurturance,
Hands join with hands
As clasped hands grasp prayer

In stories, threaded and sawed
Not of truth
But of approximation
The hope that fables instill

From that family’s skewed horizon
Glancing west toward the night
Darkness ever beseeching fictions
Of residual day birth

While the sun bleeds into clouds
The dusky moment captures
Time’s paralysis
The incapacity
To embrace
Relentless night

As goodnights depart with goodnights
And sweet dreams decay…

Yet I know the banked fires
By which these solemn myths refrain:

The comfort of an evening’s slumber
A hearth’s internal flame
The red brick tiles of their rooftops
Are rounded and full almost bursting
 ~~~

Insectivore


Your fingers pound the edges
Of the table as I hum

Above, around, beneath you

To touch your skin   
Your eyes, disdaining
At the very least producing
Slight arrest in you

As you witness me, dismissing me

As miniscule
And I bear witness
To my experience of being

Annoying, aberrant, shamed

Are you blind?
Can you not see?

My dashing skirt?
My delicate limbs?
My lightness of spirit?
My silver-winged body?

~~~

A Handmaiden of the Sun

The evening cools
Especially the bones
As the air stirs
Leaves reminiscent
Of the storm that never came

The settling sun permits
The caste-eyed
Lunacy of the moon

A half-blind eerie goddess

Made to wait upon his light

Staring straight but sullenly
She arches in the sky
Unblinking whispers solitude
She drifts below the earth

Moon light never
Self-acknowledged
Her glance, a muted glare
Captivated, envying
The countenance of the sun
~~~

To render self

In this room dust gathers
On permutable
Folds and tears in walls of skin
Of surface lies, an essence

I am almost there

Artificial light (it can’t be called
Anything else)
Situated in my eyes

I, only I, know this

A little particle, eternal
Dreams of something more
A spark, perhaps, resistant
To light’s obliteration

Within the glass, distortions
Mirroring of self
However non-committal

I am almost there




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