After Rain

Geri Waddington

After Rain

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.

I suffer shame in all these images.
The garden is primeval, Giovanni
in soggy denim squelches by my hub,
over his ruin
shakes a doleful head.
But he so beautiful and diademed,
his long Italian hands so wrung with rain
I find his ache exists beyond my rim
and almost weep to see a broken man
made subject to my whim.

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest
within this beauty as one rests in love,
till pears upon the bough
encrusted with
small snails as pale as pearls
hang golden in
a heart that know tears are a part of love.

And choir me too to keep my heart a size
larger than seeing, unseduced by each
bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell,
so that the whole may toll,
its meaning shine
clear of the myriad images that still-
do what I will-encumber its pure line.

P.K. Page

Look how she does it. Broderie anglaise, chantilly, tulle, chlorophyl, sequins, ellisoid, theorum, encrusted, diademmed, pearls. From these she makes lace out of cabbages, geometry out of garden steps, silver webs out of clothes-lines, a king out of a gardener, jewels out of raindrops. The images she casts on our mind's eye are extraordinary. I see old mythological gardens  - "pears upon the bough/ encrusted with/ small snails as pale as pearls/ hang golden" - is this the Garden of the Hesperides where Hercules travels to find the golden fruit? Is this an enchanted garden? Or a pest-ridden, soggy cabbage patch worked by gum-booted and discouraged gardener? And then that "O choir him, birds," - and "Keep my heart a size larger than seeing." reminds me of Dylan Thomas - and really, isn't that the key line?

"Keep my heart a size larger than seeing."

Still Will I Harvest Beauty

Willy Kriegel “Trüber Tag”

Still Will I Harvest Beauty

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows:

In colored fungus and the spotted fog

Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog

Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows

Of rust and oil, where half a city throws

Its empty tins; and in some spongy log

Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog.

And a black pupil in the green scum shows.

Her the inhabiter of divers places

Surmising at all doors, I push them all.

Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge

Turn back forevermore with craven faces,

I tell you Beauty bears an ultrafringe

Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

This is the challenge we each take up or shrug off – to learn to see beauty. It sounds abstract, impractical, the very thing a poet would prescribe (‘poet’ in the negative connotation of that word – an individual with their head in the clouds, not useful in the ‘real’ world). But it isn’t so. The person who looks for beauty does so from a deep longing for it, and what’s more – a belief it should be there. Beauty has to be. Do we not know that? Maybe it’s buried too deep to feel anymore. Beauty has a source, a centre that draws and connects us.The speaker of this poem feels it. She uses that tell-tale word “still”, which is another way of saying “even now”, or “in spite of everything to the contrary”, and then she gives us a list of tainted, poisoned, neglected and dumped places and things, and delivers this wonderful line – “Surmising at all doors, I push them all.” It’s a challenge. I imagine her, hand on another door, looking back at me with scorn, “If this ugliness disheartens you, keeps you from following, go home, coward.” It’s a challenge. And I want to go with her, join in her work, see those “unguessed at” mysteries. Beauty is here, and I need to see it - more, I want to show it to you.