I have pounded myself out
on the rock of this memory,
cracked open and drained out;
is there water left
in this stone?
Tag: poetry
Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: VIII. Enchanted Rock / The Ides of March
Enchanted Rock / The Ides of March
I will remember the branches and the light
filtering through the locust grove.
You will remember the emerald brilliance
of the grass.
We will remember together the unyielding line of granite
that still gives way over time:
The sacrament of breath.
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Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: VII. Tishomingo Granite
Tishomingo Granite
From the Quarry at Tishomingo
Comes this Pre-Cambrian intrusion
Begotten when the first rain dropped on boiling rock.
Only later to be named
With sounds recalling some child’s summer game.
These random elements, the stuff of stars
Cooled by Bowen’s ruled order (though he was not invented yet)
Pyroxene first, then salmon coloured plagioclase;
Last, cloudy silicate of common quartz
All this a billion years ago.
You know I loved you even then;
The day this rock was formed.
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Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: VI. Matins
Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: V. Dream/Moted/Motet
DREAM / MOTED / MOTET
The air is saffron with moted dust.
We sit
(on a bale of used clothing
raised and round as a dais).
Joined at the hip,
Gemini’s twins
but with legs facing out, opposite,
mirror fashion.
Left arms crossed inwards,
left hands rest
lightly on the other’s right hip;
I can feel the familiar arc of it
humming through cotton and skin,
the current of relief
turns over the silent, glacial lake within.
We are thisclose
(heads bowed, our temples almost touch).
Your face broken into cubist planes by proximity
seeing the whole would mean
dividing a fraction.
From the corner of the room
she’s looking at me;
Madonna Dolorosa,
cheeks as pink as Fra Angelico’s
forbidden mistress.
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Orphan Poetry or Paradise Lost: II. In Sommnus
In Sommnus
Who is the patron saint
of a good night’s sleep?
I need to know the correct
department to direct
my prayers when it does no good
to count the cadence of my thoughts like sheep.
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Orphan poetry or Paradise lost: I. Back Garden
Back Garden
I wish I had the patient will to unwind the miles
of iron spider’s thread that binds my love of you,
cuttingly
to my best-favoured pound of flesh.
I had a dream the morning before I left:
we touched each other so slowly that
a millennium might have passed
before my palm traversed
the radiant tenderness of your back.
You spoke to me in single words that expanded
downward like saturated leaves through still water
towards which I swam against
the natural buoyancy of awakenedness
that is unforgivingly attracted by dilating light
and found myself standing
in the wet grass of my friends’ back garden
smoking my third Gauloises.
I see a single strand of spider’s silk
resinous with dew;
well anchored.
Out of some odd, perhaps misplaced respect
for its unbroken beauty
and its slender strength.
I press four fingers against its sticky, resilient length;
I make it bend,
but do not make it break.
copyright 2011 bonnie mcclellan all rights reserved
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Veronica
Summer débutante’s gown
grown shy
blushing falls
thrilling leaf by burnishing leaf
spinning through Constables’ light
grace-full arms:
bare/baring/embarrassed
brace/bracing/embrace
November.
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In Vocation of the Muse: Page One
In Vocation of the Muse
poetry by Bonnie McClellan
Illustrations by Matthew Broussard
Invocation of the Reader
This song is written for an audience of one.
for your eyes and your mouth alone;
in hope that you may catch
the cadence of my breath
in rhythm of these words,
as I felt Dante’s breath, weighted
against my lips, chanting out
a novena of tercets, beginning:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.
The straight path also lost to me,
I follow the sound of my voice
whispered across your lips.
Trembling at the gates of hell,
inside the silent center of this caesura
we inhale.
poems © Bonnie M. McClellan
images © Matthew Broussard
ALL OTHER POEMS FROM THE SERIES “In Vocation of the Muse” have been removed from this blog. If you would like to order a bound copy of the book complete with colour illustrations at a cost of 25.00 EURO ($35 USD) + postage and handling please contact me at: bmcclellan.lapoeta@gmail.com
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Good Morning
still considering
after 4 brief
sleeping hours
if it is
that.
perhaps,
“tolerable morning”
the old phrase
in some slop-time
three-leggéd waltz:
“plenty of time.”
“je dormerai”
“quando
saremo morti.”
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 