My Poetry pages


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Write me at maryskole@aol.com

Poetry Pages


New crop, Spring, 2004

Here are a joyous, tumultuous one for spring,
and one which cries out for the future of our world,
which she calls Chironic - both marvelous poems from Laurie Corzett,
whose website can be viewed at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/8401

Spring Medley

Air clear as a free-running stream
tumbling over country rocks and minty greenery
Clear soft air of early spring
Breathing satsang, reeling eternity,
While running 'cross the straight-lined highway
-- shouting
"Hey sky, embrace me!" shouting
I embrace the air and call it Love.
I love you, love you, love you, love you
I
Form, Words, Action
I in motion
I in tumbling, stumbling, crazy image
kaleidoscope
over 'n' over
love you, love you, love you, love you

Capture the essence for an almost noninstant
Capture the image of groping, grabbing, grasping
gazing heartfelt on release, but
love you, love you, love you, love you
insane, insatiable
cannot touch release of
love you, love you, love you, love you

Smothering in the too pure air.

Hey, Springtime,
Got some time to be wasting
So I tracked a songbird
on a still bare treebranch
and joined it in song.
What wonder the woods bring
I can't contain it.
Thistle and briar weeds
Capture my imagination
Grow wild and tangly
All through my mind.

Chironic* Vision, Part I

The future descends
from the fear-embroidered skies
the vision is of holocaust -- when everybody dies
A new day is dawning, but is it sun or storm?
We have a chance to make our mark
but is it right or wrong?
The military marches
The anti-warriors too
We take our stand in battle
The many and the few
Spinning tales of magic, of wizardry and fate
We want to know just how it ends before it's all too late
We sing our song too late
We right our wrongs too late
We want to know the date
To find a better fate

Can I tell you?
Can I help you to know or understand?
Can I utter the words that will make you see me?
Standing here before you, I want to take your hand
to be swirled up into a magical dancing
to be taken to worlds of beauty entrancing
to give you the will and the wonder to set you free.
Can you see me?

Laurie Corzett
*Chiron was the greatest of the Centaurs in Greek mythology, a healer, skilled in hunting, medicine, music and the art of prophecy. The great Greek physician Esculapios was taught by him, and Jason, Herakles and Achilles were also his pupils. Jason accidentally wounded him with an arrow dipped in the poison of the Hydra, which caused him terrible pain. Being immortal, he could not die, so, to relieve his intense suffering, Zeus finally placed him among the stars in the constellation Sagittarius, where you may see him in the winter night sky. So Chiron symbolizes both prophecy, skill in inspiring others and also great pain..Are we finally ready for Chiron to teach us? MML

Laurie adds: You are invited:
Plase check out
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seerseeker
Please join and help to form what we become.

Group birth data:
October 17, 2003
8:52 pm EDT
Boston, MA/www
-or - if you know of anyone you think would be interested, please feel free
to send this invitation on to them.

..............................................
Here's a lovely one that came to me out of the blue sometime in 2002 from someone on behalf of David Alger. It has taken me these three years to figure out what happened to him! Better late than never! David became a victim of the World Trade Center bombing on September 11th, 2001. He was 57 years of age. See below for a brief bio and many tributes to him and his work on behalf of humanity.
Glass Of Faith

i have nothing but faith inside
my body
meeting with my soul
from head to
toe
faith
keeps me strong
going
long
rolling far
always
faith is
what i
have

David Alger
Click here to read memorials to David Alger from the New York Times
and Tacoma News Tribuhne

and one by Wendell Berry:
After 9/11
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.
-- Wendell Berry.............................
Here's one I wrote after visiting the "Garden tomb" in Jerusalem:
GARDEN TOMB


They have taken away my Lord!
The muezzin sounds on the sunlit air -
Birds twitter on the soughing branches -
Joseph's kindly presence lingers still
in the garden,

But the tomb is empty, once again.
He is not there!
The heart lurches, contracts,
The pain - the loss - once again
Clutches at the inmost depth of my being.

The great stone has been rolled aside
And the stony cradle lies empty
Where they had laid him
Swaddled in linen as so long ago
When I held him at my breast -

Now so still,
His long, bloodied limbs like clay,
Straightened, tenderly wrapped,
The smooth white brow
Now clotted with dark gouts,
The tender flesh so cruelly pierced -

The joy spreads only gradually -
It comes on the in-breath
As the meaning begins only slowly
To work its perennial alchemy
In the sodden mass of the grieving,
Leavening, raising, lightening the heaviness
and the dark.

Sun warms the golden stone.
The darkness of the doorway beckons,
Draws me in with caught breath
And tiptoeing exultation.
I now can dare to come closer -

Yes! O yes. He is truly gone!
Christos voschryes! Alleluiah!
Only the shadow of his presence remains
Like a sweet odor
Lingering inside.

The bells in churches beyond the wall
Begin their tumult.
Shafts of golden sunlight
Slant downward through the trees.
It is finished!
It is over!
Deo gratias -
Thanks be to God.

-- December, 1987.......................

And one I wrote on a dazzling winter morning driving up from the village:
Global Warming
Fields alive with diamond stars
glitter, incandescent, reflected in sunlight;
Rocks, their harshnesses softened by
flowing, fluorescent ice-meringues
line the roadways like petits fours for giants;: Dazzling sun tempts the trees to unseasonal budding;
Spring fever is in the February air.
How can I love this day so much
While my heart is whispering that it is wrong?
Here's one by Deb Cavanaugh:
A War On Terrorism

Sitting on my front stoop,
Looking at the oil tankers across the street,
I stop and shiver.
Do I start packing now?
Do I fortify my basement?
Gather supplies?
Like what . . . food and water?
Batteries? Guns? Gas masks?
How about a spacesuit for each of us,
And maybe a rocket,
For a quick get-away?

Then I stop again and take a deep breath.
Ah . . . the polluted air from the Port of Albany
Fills my lungs and my consciousness with reality.
Maybe I can start by lightening my load.
Live more simply.
Gather flowers.
Listen to my neighbors.
Stay close to those I love . . .
And hope -
Always hope!
With love from Deb Cavanaugh 9/19/01
Here are two by my friend Alice Howell:

PARADOX
How wealthy I am
in such a lack
how rich
in the specific of poverty
I have everything this day
but you to share it with
and so it seems I have nothing -
yet, knowing such ever-brimming loss
places me beyond my peers of need
somehow
it is like having all of never
into which to set a now.
a.o.howell

Hera
She was getting old and fat and hopeless
but youth still raged in her
shaking all the slender saplings
of her longing
and their leaves were ripping off
falling away as yellow sighs
into the privacy of her lonely nights.
Who, after all, could kiss Zeus as deeply
as she could in her time
or open to him laughing and rejoicing
until the last flashing moments of love
when the world sundered and burst into glory
and she, too, lay helpless and fruitful
under his shining eyes?
But Zeus had always been fickle
and had fertility on the brain
off busy stoking the fires in the
loins of men
or making a fool of himself
according to gossip
clowning as a bull, or a swan, or a shower of gold
all for some strumpeting daughters of earth.
And at his age!
What source was there left to appeal to?
wives know too much, thought Hera,
ever to make gods of their husbands.
She turned resentfully into the laundromat
and its unfriendly neon lights
and pushed with her bursting hips
a young girl bodily away from the washing machine.
Age before beauty!
Then she dumped all her jealous sheets
and his flaming underwear
into the swashing soapsuds
and stood by glaring, mesmerized,
through the dark glass of time
by the tumbling cosmic bubbles
of the universe
hoping against expectation
that this time
they would come out fresh and clean.
a.o.howell....................................

Here are two by my friend Phoebe Wray:
Encounter

I met you in the dark.
No, YOU were in the dark;
I was searching for the light.
I was my Self that day.
And the sun was shining.
Wasn't it? I thought so.

Oh Self! I said, that day
you say was dark and I insist
the sun was shining
golden in the autumn air,
You damn disgusting thing.
I will never again ask you
to step aside. Let's have it out:
here and now.
I AM YOU.
Don't YOU understand?
Don't try to trick me;
don't try to say "There,
there, it is all mind-stuff
and mind-games."
It isn't.

I want to love you.

Aha! You blinked first!
Was that so hard?

I wept.
I thought the tears might be endless.
Not so. They stopped. Dried up.
And there you stood, Self,
washed and glistening
with the salt of my anguish,
smiling.

Phoebe Wray................................
The River
There are no willows here.
Ophelia could not drown,
singing her bawdy song,
dying beautifully.
This stream is brown and sluggish.
The sky cannot see itself.
And yet … and yet …
I sat here once with you,
swatting mosquitoes,
drinking beer from a can,
touching the hairs on your arms
to watch them move.
I will never understand beauty.
I will never forget you.: ...........................Phoebe Wray




AM I TRUE?
Forgiven it burns
in my head and hand
I feel alone
Did I do it to myself,
a force so strong
sometimes I hate to be around
myself?
Forgive me for my hatred.
it is my only protection
without it my vulnerability
spins a web of anxiety
am i strong enough
for this world
un-angry?

Click here for another one of mine:


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Write me at maryskole@aol.com