Return to Salem

Rocks lie hard-packed on either side of
the green hummock of the driveway’s center.

They are close-nestled. Each in the midst of others,
cuddled in near sand and leaf-dust.

To take one away is the work of persistent fingers
with dirty nails that pry and loosen the edges of the stone

until it pulls free, leaving behind its perfect impression,
a unique dent in the driveway. Come again tomorrow.

The pocketed stone retains its shape: lines that match
those of the hole, perhaps some hole-dust still clinging.

The hole, though, won’t fit; it holds other things:
more dust, a pebble. The rock can’t be put back.

 

(Whilst resurrecting poetry, it seemed appropriate that this should follow yesterday’s poem.  “Salem” is a place I once called home.  © Stacy Nott, 2006)

 

Poems about everything have already been written*

And there is nothing new
under the sun which saw
Solomon fail to find
anything fresh.
Yet even he
wrote books to say
what had been said before.

I am not the first
to seal my life in cardboard
and give a loved place
one last look, to never
see it quite that way
again. The queen
of Sheba, even, could not
return to her land
unchanged.

There is no remembrance of former things
except what has been written,
Nor will there be any
remembrance of later things;
yet we write
to be among those who come after.

 

*Italicized portions from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.

(And no, I’m not moving now.  Just rereading Ecclesiastes, and wanting to post something here, and remembering this poem, © Stacy Nott, 2007)

Postcard from July

Someone has spilled
a can of warm
shadows over
the sun-gold lawn
so gently that
we did not hear
the splash above
metallic buzz
of mud-daubers
and shrill turning
of cicadas

which we might say
are leaves singing
if we had not
found their empty,
brown skins clinging
to bark and grass
and lying crushed
on hot gravel
when we walked
to get the mail.

 

 

First published in The Brogue, 2008

Grey goose and gander,
Waft your wings together;
Carry the good King’s daughter
Over the one-strand river.

Silver wings wafting,
River bright and slender.
This the King’s daughter;
Her father will defend her.

Rest, good King’s daughter;
Darkness may not linger;
Over one-strand river
Waits the Morning Bringer.

Borne on goose-wing forward,
You may go with sorrow;
Still the good King’s promise
Is a bright tomorrow.

Ere your cry is spoken,
It He will be hearing.
On the brown brink eastward
See your Help appearing.

Ah! when you have seen Him,
All you left behind you
Shall appear as nothing
In the joy assigned you.

Haste, goose and gander,
Waft your wings together;
Carry the good King’s daughter
Over the one-strand river!

To Be a Stone

“I am happy to be a stone.”*

One of a long tradition,
honored and terrible.

Stained with the blood
of martyrs in Jerusalem,
licked by the fire
of God on Mount Carmel,
stricken by Moses’ staff
that water might pour forth,
rolled away
from an empty tomb.

Of my tradition,
the slayer of Goliath;
those that bore
the law from Sinai;
Ebenezer, when the LORD
routed the Philistines;
and that One, rejected
by builders, now become
chief Cornerstone.

*from “Stone” by Charles Simic

“To Be a Stone,” by Stacy Nott, published in The Brogue, 2007

this morning

Leaf-green boat skimmed
border where
mud-smooth pond met
rippling air.

And I was glad.

I’ve been searching for the image and the words that would make my mundane day into something poetic and blog-worthy.  My images are folded and wrinkled, I lift them, shake out their folds,  spread them carefully, and my mind slides over and over them, smoothing as the iron under my hand smoothed shirts today: the collar must be folded down, the pleat in the back ironed straight.  I place my smoothed images on hangars, buttoning their topmost buttons, to hang them in a dim closet until they are ready to be worn.   But it is night, and they are not ready now.