Friends. FRIENDS.
The launch of my first poetry collection is just ONE WEEK AWAY!!!
That’s right: on April 27th, you will finally be able to order your very own copy of Songs in the Gate: Poems from the Borderland of Now and Not Yet.
BEHOLD:
It’s a great feeling. (Literally: I’ve been perusing my special proof copy this week, and this book just feels great in one’s hands.)
In case you missed last week’s post, April is National Poetry Month. To continue the celebration AND to fan the flames of your excitement regarding this new book, I give you the first poem of my “Storm” cycle, the first cycle in this collection.
Written in 2009, this was my first true attempt at a “free verse” poem – I was deep in T. S. Eliot at the time – and it grew over the following year into a series of poems, like chapters in a story, all unfolding the same theme from slightly different vantage points.
Enjoy this foretaste, and I shall see you next week!
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The Storm: Part 1
The storm is coming.
Its portents drew me from the fence
And now I see it – not through spattered glass
But as a curtain – its own entity
Standing out against the sky
In hazy, imperturbable relief
I wonder: how close before I’m drenched?
So – naturally – I head towards it
What else is there – for me – to do with beauty?
Slip into delicious disquiet
The familiar frantic inadequacy:
How will I express this?
Capture it, convey it
Hold it, share it, own it, possess it –
No.
Let it only be itself.
Look to the right, leave it behind
Glad only to have seen it:
A gift sufficient for today.
So I meander, and study another piece of sky
Another facet of my soul reflected
On a canvas finite in textures, infinite in truth
Savoring my smallness.
How could I express this?
Time and Ability: my fence
The glass wall of sound design
The silk shackles of recent acceptance
Hold your breath: content.
“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.”
Why strive to understand?
To abandon to reflection
And reflect that abandonment
To share what isn’t even – really – mine?
Cling to rigid contentment, straight ahead –
No.
Look to the left.
The storm has followed me.
Racing up behind with visible speed
Overreaching in its joy
The curtain curves around me
Surrounded by the sound of its arrival
Before a drop can reach the ground
I run before it, laughing
Its herald singing at my heels
Merrily, he pushes me inside
But his voice calls through the fence
Spattering the glass:
I won’t drench you – not yet
Too late for introduction, too soon for full embrace –
But I’m coming.
Seek me. See me.
Sing me, pen me, cry me, reflect me
Conduct me
Berate me
Rail against me
But don’t
No
Don’t turn your back on me.
Urges me to think . . . Is the last bit a rebuke?? I think not but do not want to miss any part.
I think it is more a warning – a caution – than a rebuke. And even the warning is born out of love: “If you turn away, you will miss all that I have for you. Don’t.”
The rest of the cycle makes this clear . . . hence, the mounting excitement for the availability of this and many other delights this Friday! 🙂