CAMP FIRE WOMEN
My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.
Sometimes all night she watches,
holds the flame at the center
of the world. It is her sacred way.
And mine? To search the forest,
to gather the wood: This for kindling,
this for tinder, this for cleansing,
this for a long and steady burn.
POET IN GARRET, NOVEMBER
~attributed to Jan Vermeer, 1703
You see at once that she’s cold,
the way she hunches
over the table in the fireless
room. Light from one small
window slants across her page.
She is half-turned toward you,
her lips are parted, her eyes
focused on a word appearing
just above your right shoulder.
LABYRINTH
Red boards, white halls.
Posters and paint.
The inside of a piano.
A washer full of light.
Two stairways
to one long corridor.
You do not have a clue.
You do not need one.
If you are lost, cry out,
no doubt someone
will hear you.
You will always be found.
What you do
is up to you.
At the center—
no minotaur—
a glass door. Behind it,
earnest, commanding
fairies are waiting.
What did you expect?
Their Queen,
at first glance seems
innocent, unwinged.
Little do you know.
Her throne a desk.
Her wand a pen.
Enter at your peril.
Are you ready
to love the edges?
To practice not-doing?
Are you ready
to change your life?
I wrote this years ago for my friend Maggie, who at age 80 started modeling for art students, because, she said, “They need to know what old people look like.” She liked the poem, and recorded herself reading it back to me. She died a couple of years ago, in her 90s. I miss her.
DRAWING LESSON
—in memory of Maggie Miller
Here you are, most with a world ahead,
some with half a world behind,
come to draw the human form.
And here I am naked before you
so comfortable, easy
in my eighty year old skin.
I love my folds,
metamorphosed mountains.
You think you can draw
an old woman, dear babies?
Lean in, look hard.
It will cost you all your life.
I have been down deep,
through muscle, sinew, bone.
Loved long a man long dead,
borne a son and let him go.
I am learning how to pray
and I laugh when you ask me to tell.
In my time I have come
to the heart’s solid core–
heat of life and more–
Now over you I pour
my fire like water.
From where I lie I see
the place the stars will rise.
THE FEAST OF ST. WALPURGA
I have just returned
but before I sleep
I must record.
The moon was dark,
the sky was clouded.
Earthscent was rising
up from the valley
into the cold air
along the ridge.
We came in our silence,
lit the fire in silence.
When they arrived,
we sang the words
to set them free.
While we waited then
for the flames to die,
while we waited
in our silence
with the long darkness
around us, a pair
of owls called
from the forest
down in the trees.
A good omen
for the season to come.
The flight home
was uneventful.
MORNING AFTER
(tempera, glitter, found objects on cardboard)
~after Linda Shere
Those splashes of color—
pink, green, yellow—
represent, I believe,
pajamas. Or
sleeping bags.
There’s a plate of—
cookies—on
the table.
Chocolate chip.
Or—possibly—
blueberry muffins?
No. Cookies.
Art supplies everywhere–
paint, brushes, glue, clay.
Art everywhere.
There’s glitter on everything.
Well, almost everything.
Not on the muffins.
Cookies, I mean.
Feathers.
Coffee filters.
Small plastic animals.
3 hair ties
or whatever
they’re called.
Those elastic things.
I’ve never had a daughter,
so I really don’t know.
PORTRAIT
(Neo-Realist School, mid 21st century)
ascribed to J. M. P.
She could be someone’s grandmother
with her pink cheeks, white hair
in a bun, the immaculate lace
collar fastened with a cameo.
She sits in an old-fashioned
lawn chair—a blue that clashes
with the blue sky and the blue
flowers of her dress. Her lips
are slightly parted in a slight
smile, but her eyes, as she stares
at the viewer, are challenging.
Both hands rest lightly on an
animal curled asleep on her lap.
It is the size of a small dog, but
do not be fooled. Notice
the fine brush-work.
The artist has perfectly rendered
each guard hair, each glossy quill.
THE DELPHIC ORACLE
~Mary Pratt, (Pre Raphaelite Sisterhood, 1848)
Smoke rises before the girl
seated on her three-legged stool.
Behind her, the cave mouth
shades into a purple dark.
The supplicant stands
like a pillar, her robes
still as sculpture.
Keep looking.
Smoke mingles
with thin cloud in the pale
sky, shaping horses.
Keep looking.
The supplicant’s arms are rising
toward the heavens. Listen.
Between the sky and the cave,
the oracle has begun to speak.
SIX WOMEN
(watercolor, 1932)
~after J. Fancher
Forget what you think
you know about perspective.
Somewhere beyond cubism
the women stand
on a peach cloud,
their shoulders touching.
They share one shoe,
a purple KEEN Praesidio,
every detail visible.
Don’t even attempt
to see their face.
EAST OWL
. . . . she must speak
to men in the language of men with a man’s tongue,
and then they will not hear her
because they understand her.
~Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘While the Old Men Make Ready to Kill”
Aunt, I miss you.
Not many here
speak Woman.
Aunt, an owl keeps flying over me.
She wants me to learn to sit still,
hunt words. Wants me to focus,
lock on. I’ve seen her
dive for frogs, sit on a branch
with a green leg dangling
from her beak. I’ve found
marks of her wings in the snow.
I’ve found the blood of rabbit.
I’ve heard her singing in the dark.
Aunt, my hills are covered with snow.
The men still aren’t listening
but the women keep singing
for ourselves and our nieces.
Aunt, we are learning to hunt.
We are still learning to fly.
