HARD TIMES
1
Nineteen-thirty was a long,
cold childhood wedged into a scar
and food that filled half
the cupboard. She'd lick
the pencil stump and
make her lists. Each
item considered, written,
erased, re-written
according to what rattled
in the broken tea pot.
At six o'clock, she always
listened to the news and groaned,
her body a vast burial ground for
victims of plagues, revolutions,
wars, each groan another corpse.
She stood ironing, every stroke
a preparation for the burial,
a straightening of limbs,
a smoothing of features,
a final act of love.
2
That winter, he worked at the sawmill
sleeping in unheated boxcars
with his union card
warming his vest pocket.
At night, he kept the others awake
grinding his teeth.
Running a log through the power saw,
he sliced off a finger
then held his hand high above his head
like a dripping torch.
He still grinds his teeth
in his sleep and spends
his time adding figures,
quoting costs
and measuring distances
with his missing fingers.
3
Bench sitters on upper Broadway
count passing cars and
pavement cracks spilling over
into empty lots
gone wild.
Store fronts tilt,
weather-scoured
like old customers
leaning on carts in Safeway aisles
waiting for the round-up
back to one-room lives.
Light dies out.
The street steps into darkness.
They stand on sidewalks
drowning
as the past leaks in.
Then, like a slow
coming-out of sleep, they
shuffle back,
cook the same soup bone
down to stock and vapor,
empty the pot
and wait for a surprise.
They didn't plan it this way.
Nothing for the ears.
Nothing for the eyes.
And night tapering off
to a shirt hanging on a nail
and a saucer filled with
all the cold mornings ahead.
YES
In the other, the sunken life,
in the world of green feedings,
all the leaves say yes and meadows
of curved stems say yes and warmth
flows from the depth of this and out toward
horizons where hills are still transparent
and the ground white with drippings from the moon.
Waking from this memory of green,
we'll face the skirmish of each day
with hostages retrieved from the night.
this time will be different,
new patterns for the feet,
wings for the eyes
and our names everywhere like grass.
*
We hold darkness in our palms
No maps to where we're going,
where we've been. The hours
move like secrets as silence
stretches a live wire
overhead. In spite of wax and burning
sand, years move in hesitations
and a moment lasts forever
as we gather handfuls of time
to rub against our mouths.
*
We say yes to the peeling away of winter
to rain's slanted messages
and the language of warm winds, yes
to yeasty roots burrowing in earth
to skeletal trees putting on flesh
to ground smearing itself with green pigment.
and the sun blooming in our boides
with a promise more permanent than love.
yes to the unborn waiting to be born,
to the sky stretching naked overhead
and the days so compact and clear,
we could carry them in our arms.
EVE'S LEGACY
She picks the perfect one,
almost out of reach, more
tempting than the rest. Wedging
her thumb into the soft stem end, she
twists and cracks the fruit in half,
it's white skin umber at the core.
Stripped of other appetites, she smells,
nuzzles, tongues, sinks her teeth into the flesh,
rotating as she bites until reaching
the womb-shaped heart, convinced that only
a solid piece of fruit understands teeth
that go on biting and biting a whole lifetime.
KNIVES
In my kitchen, I know
each blunted blade,
worn handle, broken tip,
the past compressed in steel.
Along with sacramental noise of
cups knocking, lips smacking,
I hear carving knives and cleavers
splitting days into edible proportions.
Skillful at the cutting board,
I pay my vegetable tithes
to the crock pot, the salad,
the wok and slice and slice
into the heart of things.
Familiar knives carve me into
chunks served up for family dinner.
From the scraps and bones
I make a broth and feed myself.
Ruth Daigon was editor of Poets On: for twenty years until it ceased
publication. She won "The Eve of St. Agnes Award (Negative Capability 1993).
Her poems have been widely published: Shenandoah, Negative Capability, Poet &
Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Poet Lore,
Tikkun....Internet "E" zines include Ariga, Crania, Cross Connect, Zuzu's
Petals, Switched On Gutenberg, Recursive Angel, Mudlark.... also she appeared
as Poet-Of-The-Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an "E"
chapbook in English and Spanish) and Web Del Sol has recently published her
latest chapbook on the WEB. Her poetry collection "Between One Future And
The Next" was published by Papier-Mache Press 1995 followed by "About A Year"
(Small Poetry Press in 1996), Gale Research included her autobiography in
their Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, 1997 and she won the Ann
Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California).
RUTH DAIGON 86 SANDPIPER CIRCLE, CORTE MADERA ,CA 94925 (415) 924 0568
ruthart@aol.com http://www.freeyellow.com/members/lyric
Get your ownFree Home Page