Poetry Magazine, Rachel Dacus, December/January 2002-2003

Poetry Magazine

Rachel Dacus

USA

http://www.dacushome.com

Earth Week: Tadepadegullidem

1.
In Tadepadegullidem it's raining scarlet
and teal again. Villagers saunter through orange
fields and do not ask their clothes are sky-stained
They stop for a spot at the chai walla,
heads waggling No, no while they mouth
Yes, yes. They would not believe that a meteor's
dust could gush fuchsia. In Tadepadegullidem,
they step around stones of belief,
unlike the man at Cal Tech who peers
into the Big Bang and shrugs,
pondering the hand or blunder that set the spin.
Down the hall a professor pens a prize-winner
that says over and over, I will not admit
what I cannot see. His monolith will not be jarred
loose by a sky splashing puce.

2.
The earth's burners heat up. Poles shift
right side up. A man calculates the speed
of a butterfly's wing churning air,
triggering a cooling that lifts warm into cold
jet stream, whirling up sea spouts that touch down
off the coast of Brittany. Leaning back
in his chair, frogs rain in his brain.
In Tadepadegullidam, umbrellas open
even on sunny days. Pounding out
the inexplicable laundry stains on rocks,
living under constant wonder's no great strain.
A little soda lifts the stains.

3.
In Tuvalo, high is low. The islands are sinking
while the stratosphere drinks warm oceanic gulps.
Tuvalans agree on New Zealand if they must flee.
Ocean's rise is no surprise to the man who charts
Pacific waves in articles for New York, Beijing
and Delhi, where they simply turn the page.
Katabatic wind, fire storm, chromatic rain
and glacier rift, noted every Saturday in "Earth Week,
the Planet's Diary." If a plan exists, is it
the hand of blunder or wonder?
In Tadepadegullidem, no one thinks
of extinction's brink, nor in Cuzco,
where they find that snakes now writhe
in mud slides as earth becomes a conga line.

The Palm

The Egyptians prized the date palm's fertility,
but its unisex flowers are small, whitish
and clustered as a crowd of nuns in deshabillé.
Theophrastus coined its common name,
deriving it from Phoenician raiders
who spread the palm in their wake
like a trail of arrows.

A swag of serrated green knives,
a bristle of blades – it is so much older
than anything you can say
to hurt me. The buzz of verbs and names
you underhanded this morning
cannot compare to the shock of an orange frizz
of dates on its piano nobile.

The slender trunk is sheathed
in sawed-off leaf stumps,
a collar of wounds as precisely lapped
as feathers. You could never be
so well armed, nor shoot
as straight as the palm's crownshaft
into the distant autumn sun.
Could never match its rigid
and rattling arguments.

A Cup of Fine Print

In Sichuan, the divine Shen Nung
strolled along imperial palisades.
A monkey flung a camellia leaf
into his hot water cup. Its char
reached his nose and heaven's cradle
swayed. Sip became art,
tea made prayer pastime
and took to the road,
trailing empire's steam and silk.

Now parasailers pluck cliff-grown
twigs to explode in near-boiled water,
unpacking for screen-flattened noses scents
of sea-musk and withered roses.
Tea quenches the city's chaos,
and in Midwest ladylike rooms, blooms
and billows. San Franciscans keep diminutive
Chinese iron pots for whole leaf immersion.
In Jerusalem, seers scry
the script of peace in upended cups.
Around town, coffee lines are parting.
Where brash palates once chugged
a rude buzz, now sipping librarians
make the cup a quiet room
to map frontiers, reading a world of fine lines.

© Copyright, 11/19/02, Rachel Dacus.