Julia Loken

 

Ode To an Artichoke

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.
And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

 

Pablo Neruda  

 

"In the subsoil/The carrot/With its red mustaches/Was sleeping..." 

 

Each vegetable/fruit/food poem by Neruda I have read has changed how I think. 

Somehow, ordinary objects become magnets to which history and art and life rush toward as if toward their true home. 

I'm not describing it well, but what I mean to say is that this is the magic of words, and especially poetry.

It unveils. It removes the dingy surface, and what it shows has almost endless possibilities.

The new question is - 

is anything ordinary?

conversation, elevated

 

Victor Delhez

dante, i said

the haze has lifted

everything is coming

into focus

 

i can't say how 

but this tower overlooks

 scenes of my life

i recognize

these passages

 

as leaves from my life

 

how different they look

when seen from above

when seen from this perspective

 

e.p. 

 

 

Perspective, retrospective - hindsight, insight -

if only I had a vantage point from which there was clarity!  

 

 

all nearness pauses

Maxfield Parrish

all nearness pauses, while a star can grow
all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing and the peaceful hills
(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)

and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day’s death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise

goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon.

Times a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all)nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing, gaining
—love! if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to(see?) begin

e.e. cummings 

 

Cummings' poems are so compact, how does a person begin to take them in? He sets out the opposites - "nearness", "farness" and then melds them together, he divides and then makes whole. He says, " not this, not that, but both", he is an "All" poet, a grand swirler and mixer of Everythings. And though stammered and ungrammered, utterly clear and true. 

That golden line:

 

"...and history immeasurably is

sweeter by a single sweet day's death"

 

I mean, who makes you think of the fine details of a minute within the breadth of all time quite as instantaneously as this?

Or:

 

"Time's a strange fellow;

More he gives than takes."

The briefest summation of the greatest complication!

I sit back and chew, just chew on his words.

Nocturne

Alphonse Mucha

Nocturne

Now through night's caressing grip

Earth and all her oceans slip,

Capes of China slide away

From her fingers into day

And th'Americas incline

Coasts towards her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep

Into crooked holes to sleep:

Just and unjust, worst and best,

Change their places as they rest:

Awkward lovers like in fields

Where disdainful beauty yields:

While the splendid and the proud

Naked stand before the crowd

And the losing gambler gains

And the beggar entertains:

May sleep's healing power extend

Through these hours to our friend.

Unpursued by hostile force,

Traction engine, bull or horse

Or revolting succubus;

Calmly till the morning break

Let him lie, then gently wake.

 

W. H. Auden

That sensation of the turning earth - my favourite part of this poem, distinctly felt although never directly mentioned. 

 

The Story of the End of the Story

 

Andrew Ferez

 

 The Story of the End of the Story

 

To keep from ending

The story does everything it can,

Careful not to overvalue

Perfection or undervalue

Perfect chance,

As I am careful not to do in telling.

By now a lot has happened:

Bridges under the water,

No time outs,

Sinewy voices from under the earth

Braiding and going straight up

In a faint line.

I modify to simplify,

Complicate to clarify.

If you want to know your faults, marry.

If you want to know your virtues, die.

Then the heroine,

Who resembles you in certain particulars,

Precipitates the suicide

Of the author, wretchedly obscure,

Of that slim but turgid volume,

By letting slip:

Real events don't have endings,

Only the stories about them do.

 

James Galvin

 

 

"By now a lot has happened..." 

What could I possibly add to that?

 

                         

Chorus

Chia-Chi Yu

Chorus

That rain-strewn night in the woods, the chorus, chorus

Of the green tree frogs called us

And let us by flashlight far from our firelight

Over and down a logging road to the marsh,

And they kept singing as green as the half-frozen

Hemlock branches we brushed slowly among,

As high and thin as the air we tried to hold

As breath among mountains, as thin

And clear as the ice our boots were breaking

Gently, each step a pale-green croaking

Of its own, as we came nearer and nearer where

They had risen out of cold graves to the cold

At the brittle edge of winter broken toward spring

To make their music over a cold spawning,

To choir all night after night, telling each other

We lived at the edge of summer, we live

Here again and again. As we came closer,

The singing ended, suddenly went silent

At a single pulsing throatbeat. Nothing but wind

And sleet made any sound over the marsh.

We turned our light away. We waited longer

And longer in darkness, shivering like the reeds

Beyond us, chilled as the film of ice at our feet,

Forgetting all words, and the first voice began

Again, far off, and slowly the green others

Nearby began their hesitant answers, their answers

Louder and clearer chorused around us

As if we belonged there, as if we belonged to them.

David Wagoner

 

 

 Growing up, spring evenings were full of frog noise from the pond. 

I wish I could hear it now.