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Citizen
town is a hole I stepped in
with my voice full of hard use
jostled and crowded
fallen I get up again
I will live sparingly
Poems on the topic: resilience
Poems on the topic “resilience” on Poets.by.
Garden
In a garden
of wilting flowers,
you continue to amaze me
by being the only one
that's still flourishing.
Upon Slowly Waking, She
rouses from a dream of fear. Suppressing
a moan, spine filled with fluids overnight,
yes, again, and ankles still in pain. Across
the flanks of her beloved she now crawls,
stumbles round the room to find the handle
of her life, or only the door, sliding her feet along.
A floor creaks with dry rot as she steps among
the objects that reshape her: bloomers, slips,
half-slips, girdles, bras, tights, stockings.
She feels, Braille-fingered, for the small room where
all who seek may find that men or women are
only men or women; here they see themselves
before any other's eyes, and by a harsh light.
Her eye looks deeply through her from the glass;
tells her that her sorrows are contemptible. So?
Where Are the Potatoes
Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching
Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves
Each rustling against other, turning brown.
Right here they were planted, next bed over,
Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up
And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost --
Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer,
The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and
Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool
Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed;
Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod
Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for
That coolness she knew as round starch balls
All her life she'd depended on. It's not
French Pink
There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves
and potpourri. They blossom out together,
several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls
French pink, shading to cream, the haunt
of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow
she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow
whips atop her gate, to bind them to.
In her middle years, her family took this place
and named it for the stony creek, dry
in summer, rolling through between house
and garden. A storm year came; that garden up
and vanished down a river to the sea,
leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.
She started fresh, by the house. For the rose
Victories
So you got up and fed the cat. That’s something.
You hauled one leg, then the other, out of your
pyjama bottoms, and you fought doggedly across
the rugged terrain of the landing. You wielded
your toothbrush like a club. You stood under
the shower’s strafe for as long as it took
to deter the enemies under your skin, if just
for a while. You got yourself dressed: trousers,
T-shirt, socks – the kit. You sat for a bit then went
to the shops for milk and fruit, whatever your tired
gut could take. You wrote. That’s something.
Even read a bit too. You talked with your wife –
only half hearing through the hounding static,
but you talked nonetheless. You watched
some show about the Vikings. That’s something.
Dark Pool
Ripple-skiffed by bird and stone
Tree is held in dark-water
The flowers fight up.
Spirit's House
From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.
Foreknown
They brought me with a secret glee
The news I knew before they spoke,
And though they hoped to see me riven,
They found me light as dry leaves driven
Before the storm that splits an oak.
For I had learned from many an autumn
The way a leaf can drift and go,
Lightly, lightly, almost gay
Taking the unreturning way
To mix with winter and the snow.
To the World
You took the rare blue from my cloudy sky;
You shot the one bird in my silent wood;
You crushed my rose — one rose alone had I.
You have not known. You have not understood.
I would have shown you pictures I have seen
Of unimagined mountains, plains and seas;
I would have made you songs of leafy green,
If you had left me some small ecstasies.
Now let the one dear field be only field,
That was a garden for the mighty gods.
Take you its corn. I keep its better yield —
The glory that I found within its clods.
To Our Friends
We've kept the faith. Our souls' high dreams
Untouched by bondage and its rod,
Burn on! and on! and on! It seems
We shall have FRIENDS--while God is God!
A Portrait
Frail, exquisite, indomitable face,
Where pain has left its trace ...
Where are the words to paint
Her curious austere charm ... elusive, pure,
As the frost etchings on the window-pane.
Ivory, ebony, lace ...
Yes I shall choose that clinging gown of black,
Severely plain, but with such frills of lace
Over the delicate wrists and blue-veined hands
That for an instant one feels all restraint
Quite useless! Ravishing, ecstatic frills
Of lace, or lacy thrills!
Choose either phrase!
She’s no fanatical saint ...
No, after all,
No saint at all!
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