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."

Love

Love

Fragile as a spider's web

Hanging in space

Between tall grasses,

It is torn again and again.

A passing dog

Or simply the wind can do it.

Several times a day

I gather myself together

And spin it again.

Spiders are patient weavers.

They never give up.

And who knows

What keeps them at it?

Hunger, no doubt,

And hope.

May Sarton

fr. Halfway To Silence

“Several times a day/I gather myself together/And spin it again.” The spiderweb as a metaphor for the fragility of love is a clear example of the practical usefulness of poetry. To have this metaphor show a web as both a work of beauty and a necessity; an expression of hunger and  hope, and how it requires daily, patient attention and repair, clearly shows me what love is  - not a falling into, like an inevitable accident, or a chemistry, like an inevitable combustion, or a fever, like an inavoidable illness, but a patient, moment by moment paying attention. An acceptance of damage, injury, and luck (bad and good). A commitment to starting over and over, to beginning anew  - every day.

Patience, that's love. Not giving up, that's love.

The web seems fragile, but as you no doubt remember, spider silk is stronger than steel.

Canal Bank Walk

Carl Larsson

Canal Bank Walk



Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.



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

“Grow with nature…” I like that. People as plants. I can’t say I comprehend this poem, but certain parts of it seem so true. (I’ve decided it’s good not to know everything, to be in the process of learning, and have a sense of my ignorance. We want answers, we think everything should be knowable, graspable, and as it were –masterable (not a word, I know). But what a miserable world that would be.)  The lines that really get to me are these – “O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web of fabulous grass and eternal voices…feed the gaping need of my senses…for this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven from green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.” I don’t know what Kavanaugh meant to say, but I do know that Eden-call, that longing for a world unworn, where I am new as well, clothed in field and sky, and growing with nature. Yes, I know that.