| Grace Cavalieri USA
Blue-Green Spirit Oh Dream Wanderer with your message stick with your rooster crowing, where is the voice I spoke after I was dead before I was born? How much has been left by the
wayside? If every dream were a tattoo how would I look? Would I start loving my skin turning it in the light holding up my arm to understand what each flower means? They say because the female bird can't sing she flies only during Summer in
Sweden, Oh no, listen, she is connected to the divine and sings of her taste for life and
death, She sings until heard, it is the voice we share where nothing is lost. Poems: New&Selected, Vision Library Publications, 1993,1997
To The Poet Who Knew Her
for William Matthews I wanted to ask if she spoke of me and just what it was she said, or find if she whispered to you the plans to end her life, I wanted to tell you my fears when she glittered with expectation, and, after that, to see if you heard that the week before, on Christmas, I'd sent her a writer's journal in which she wrote "I hope my images live up to this love" and how she died then as a final image leaving me a book of blank pages to match my love.
Your Success Just Wanting more of what you won't get is a strange light to see by. Close your eyes to time and eternity. The world will still be here. All the sheepskins hanging off the mantel name your sins, a rosary of shame. The only excuse is that you didn't know any better. You join the war and find life and death the same soldiers on either side; no footprints are left. No birds on the branch. Your lover glides up the driveway in a pointy car the color of your heart. The only trouble is he's with his new girl. You almost see a bluebird near the box but it's a leaf in shadow. I guess there's no investment but in going to your own garden, stepping out of a raw river of coals that gives no more light. Be alone in your own house even if upstairs they struggle to continue the building. Surround your spirit self. Enter the air fully as an explorer who will plan your own love after death. Imagine a day with music and sunshine. Now will be the peace that passes understanding. Will you meet me there? (unpublished) GRANDMOTHER (For Graziella Zoda) What is the purpose of visits to me twice since you've died? Downstairs near a woodstove I hear you in motion, always working, a long silken dress - tight sleeve at your wrist, soft above the elbow wide top at your shoulder for free movement. When we were young you didn't visit - you never baked a cake that I remember or babysat or held me in your lap, you were in the men's part running a man's business calling the world to order, seven children behind you raised singlehanded in your large house. You were moving, always moving. When I kept losing things like my parents, my children, money my time and health why did you appear in my room with gifts painted red, yellow, blue, brilliant colored toys. What essential fact did you want me to know, that the body is the essence of the spirit and so must be in motion? Now that I've lost my foothold, my direction, my way, what is your message, strong spirit, strong grandmother, what is the meaning of your dream-present, a bright clock shaped like a train - simply that it moves? Acknowledgment Trenton, 1990, 1992 Nettie How to make it up to her? She was no stronger than the wheat her father carried to the altar in Sicily for his penance, she was that frail, like the pale yellow Italian sun - others becoming animals as they grew but she - she turning into the sky and the ocean until there was finally no place else she could go. I would make her broth if the dead could drink, bring it in a tin cup. I would take the stories out of the vial of breath I've saved in case my own breath should stop. I'd give it to her, if it would help, but this is of no use to her now. I have so little to give up, except -- maybe, fear-- which exists only for itself. Out of the crescent moon, from these shapes I hear my father's voice calling me again, last night, low and filled with a holding heart I'd never heard before. Come to yourself, he said. In all her needs and through meanings of her crying the only thing left is my father's voice stronger than memory That was always my trouble in trying to save her, his voice. Now I remember her grief, how she stood by my father's chair as he stared angrily out the window. There she is, so slim. She wears a long silken dress, her hands are like first speech. This is progress I think, her sitting still for it without falling apart -- he, finally speaking to me. The dead are just as involved as anyone else if you listen closely. They are here to work it out with the living. Acknowledgment Heart on a Leash Red Dragon Press, 1998 © All Copyright, Grace
Cavalieri. |
