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Leonore Wilson
The Snake
Slept like fallen thought inside the petals, under the drunken
camellia bush and it bothered no one,
not the old cat clinging
to the stream of forever, panting, moving slowly over the damaged deck
where the hard shell of a month-gone slug was fed upon by its living twin.
The snake with the image of the broken cosmos on its skin,
whorls of glory: two-toned bodies, some in dark, some in radiance, a fugitive gold . . .
Failed to rattle when the dog barked, didn’t raise its head to affirm itself; no
tongue-flame with a druid hiss, no eyes narrowing like the edges of chaos.
The animal lay there like a draft of a poem. . .
The sun protected it like a child; the shadows drew near it like a sister.
Knowledge as innocence , beast that sheds its transparency
and grows another silken chausable, a cape . . .
What made me take my rage out into the world, who made me grab the shovel,
who had wounded me, brought up my oppression?
The iron handle was pure alchemy, the blade sharp as the split in things
so when I stabbed the scribbled lord, I thought it would be easy, but no!
trapped flesh does not give, hurt shape of the world
coiled, then stretching everywhere before me. . .
Sky Matter
Plato speculated the heavens birthed a constant hue after coupling
With celestial darkness, while Da Vinci, climbing Mount Rosa
Announced his theory: the eye catches minute imperceptible particles
Suspending in the air like hot air balloons; Newton,
Basking in his tub, noted the thin film of soap bubbles matched the blue
Of capillaries that streamed beneath his lover’s wrist.
So many postulate what makes up above the color of a dead man’s
Flesh, why isn’t it gray or yellow or reflect the steady
Pasture’s green, yet sight maculates, deceives; wavelengths, now the scientists say,
Most certainly are violet. Yet to imagine amethyst skies, how the mind
Can not quite wrap around it; — impossible, as if to conceive a library without a book,
Or an infant nursing from an ear. How static the imagination,
Married to routine, afraid, playing it safe. But Dali would have grinned, twisted
The butterfly of his mustache, given his penchant for turning time
Upside down; it would not have given him vertigo, he would have kept ruminating
Revenge: painting sea horses in the black noon migrating like bison
Through the mountain prairies, something no doubt analogous to Moses, Elijah and
Christ in the desert suddenly transfigured into the snowflake embodiment of white
Too Much Land
Of impassable thickets, of sun-heated pines,
Too much abundance and I could care less,
Let it catch fire, these airless expanses,
These time-honored stones where hunters pace
Under a bare-faced moon. Here the fury
Of my adherent yoke transfixes me with a million
Eyes on this spit-spattered frontier, in these
Childhood fields of skeletons and scars.
Here the rising dust burns hot, never
A sweet drowsiness but the gray dress
Of memory where I arrange my own grave,
My future foretold, the ground mauled
And torn like an ex-lover’s letter crushed in the palm.
September brings the taste of old disquiet,
Seed scattering in the wind, the darkening clouds
Descending low smelling of moth-eaten fabric,
Leafage gnawed by stars; this is the illusion
Of success, these ancestral hills, my destiny’s breadth.
Come hot flower of flame, scorch and flatten,
Topple the familial foundation of these difficult days.
Empty Nest
Why do we lie in our children’s rooms
after they have gone, after
they have left the fires of youth,
and risen shimmering and
unrecognizable
into adulthood? Why do we
crawl from the marriage bed
in the predawn
night and descend into the
deep down of where they
sunk in matter, wrestled
like obstinate gods
to become their own lucent
natures? We wish they leave
leave leave
and then we haul them
back, hunting for the original
smells, the lightening-flash cries
dissolving into the audacious
hereafter. What is this
wish to find succor
and source as if extracting
gold from lead; this journey
to return to that gnosis
when egg and sperm
collided, when out of the
primal darkness
a little light steeped
in the odium of its name,
declaring its right
to be here, to declare
its indubitable treasure,
saying I am veritas,
the living lamb
amongst you.
The Spear
after Teresa of Avila
Little fire of eternity braced
at the tip, God’s instrument
and your heart existing for it;
gathering all desire there, pulsed
muscle, heart like a mouth,
like an eye drawing-matter-into,
and then the pain, the christening
as it enters like the beloved’s face
bright in the morning when your wounds
are still fresh. You, taken in
the resolve, God’s object,
mistress, and the sword enters again,
forceful, relentless; you are
stalled in thought, obedient, not
afraid because you are
that one thing singled out.
Yesterday you were unseen,
but now your body loves,
travels to another, pronounced,
ignited, whole; this is
happiness not spoken of
but hinted. You are turned over
and over like a rock tumbled out
until you glisten, resplendent;
thus having been seized, the pain
does not retreat, but increases
until you nourish it, predestined
wick that will not evaporate:
honeycomb, vortex, female,
you are its frontier, and now
that it wants you, how
could you think it would cease?
Leonore Wilson’s poetry has been in such magazines as Quarterly West, TRIVIA, Third Coast, Pif, Poets Against the War, Madison Review, Five Fingers Review, etc. She lives and teaches in Northern California.
Copyright 2007 by Leonore Wilson. All Rights Reserved.
This page was published in May 2007.
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