Continuing the conversation about poetry (and it can be said that poetry is my main carbohydrate...)  Here is a poem by a poet I have just begun to read.  

Psalm
 
Paisley Rekdal

Too soon, perhaps, for fruit. And the broad branches,
ice-sheathed early, may bear none. But still the woman
waits, with her ladder and sack, for something to break.
A gold, a lengthening of light. For the greens to burst
into something not unlike flame: the pale fruit
blushing over weeks through the furred cleft creases:
a freckling of blood. Then the hot, sweet scent
of August rot, drawing wasps and birds and children
through the month. So much abundance, and the only cost
waiting. Looking at the tree, I almost expect the sound of bells,
a stone church, sheep in flocks. But no sound of bells,
no clarion call. The church is far down in the valley.
This tree should be a revered thing, placed at the ancient
heart of a temple. Instead, it is on a common
lot, beside a road, apartment buildings, a dog
sleeping in its yard.  The woman has come here
neither as master nor supplicant. She simply plans
to fill a plastic sack with whatever she can take:
the sweet meat giving under the press of a thumb,
covering what is its true fruit: the little pit, hard
and almond-brown that I’ve scooped out,
palmed and planted, but to no avail. A better gardener
could make demands of such a seed, could train a tree
for what desire anticipates. But here the tree grows
only for itself. And if it bears no fruit for the killing
frost, or if it flowers late because of a too-warm winter,
what debt am I owed? At whose feet should I lay
disappointment? Delight no more comforting
nor wounding than hunger. The tree traffics
in a singular astonishment, its gold tongues
lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notes
are left to rot upon the pavement. Is this the only religion
left to us? Not one only of mortification or desire,
not one of suffering, succor, not even of pleasure.
The juice of summer coils in the cells. It is a faith
that may not come to more than waiting.
To insist on pleasure alone is a mark
of childishness. To believe only in denial
the fool’s prerogative. You hunger
because you hunger. And the tree calls to this.
But the fruit is real. I have eaten it. Have plucked
and washed and cut the weight, and stewed it
with sugar and lemon peel until the gold
ran rich and thick into jars. I have spooned it
over bread and meat. I have sucked it
from my husband’s fingers. I have watched it sour
in its pots until a mist of green bubbled up
for a crust. I have gathered and failed it, as the tree
for me both ripens and fallows. But now, it is perhaps
too soon for fruit. The winter this year was hard,
the air full of smokes, and do I know if spring
reached the valley in time? Who planted this tree?
How long has it stood here? How many more years
can such a thing remain? The woman reaches a hand
up into the branches, palm cupped, weighing
the leaf knots. She is looking to see
what instincts, what weathers still grow here.
She snakes her hand through the greening branches.
Up from the valley, come the golden tongues of bells.
                                                              copyright by Paisley Rekdal, 2016

What is this religion that is the only one left to us?  A capacity to connect: this is a religion of crafting language (visual, verbal,) which has the power to extinguish distance, longing and cynicism; the power to create a transformative experience - this is the religion that remains viable for us here on a bright blue planet that is itself shifting, groaning and breathing its way into a higher consciousness.  I cannot love more how this poem connects simple acts of feeding ourselves from a specific source to the wider cosmic unfolding; some of which we comprehend, and much of which we do not. That seems to be the crux of the aesthetic experience - to highlight for each person that which we comprehend, and that which (might) remain incomprehensible. Is beauty something we cannot fully know?  We are surrounded by the golden tongues of bells.

 
  Poetry by Rekdal
    Imaginary Vessels
(Copper Canyon Press, 2016)  

 

 

 

http://fitzgeraldart.com

Psalm appeared in "Poem-a-day" on November 3, 2016.
It is copyright by Paisley Rekdal.  Used here with permission.

 

Roses in November
 
The roses are
still blooming
after all
the bad news in
November.
And rising, unbidden
from somewhere I
can not understand
and is beyond effort to
explain,
like Michael Longley’s poems

rising from beneath his

conscious-ness,
this ocean of sadness.
Like the focused seeing
of peripheral vision, it brings
into the field of our vision
this welling of emotion,
a certainty of connection.
The roses will bloom
late this year, it is warm,
there is no reason to sleep.
And they will bloom
in the spring, no matter how far
we stray from rightness.
An unbidden truth,
shining.
 
                        -Karen Fitzgerald, 11.2016

Poetry and art have the capacity to be transcendental: to carry us to another place when we are surrounded by energy not of our own choosing nor befitting our spirits.
While I have never been a political artist, the dawning of this new era in our country causes concern. I feel capable of responding in the only way I know.