| |
|
During
the dearth and lack of those two thousand
Million years of death, one wished primarily
Just to grasp tightly, to compose, to circle,
To link and fasten skillfully, as one
Crusty grey bryozoan builds upon another,
To be anything particular, flexing and releasing
In controlled spasms, to make boundaries--replicating
Chains, membranes, epitheliums--to latch on with power
As hooked mussels now adhere to rocky beaches;
To roll up tightly, fistlike, as a water possum,
Spine and skin, curls against the cold;
To become godlike with transformation.
And in that time one eventually wished,
With the dull swell and fall of the surf, to rise up
Out of oneself, to move straight into the violet
Billowing of evening as a willed structure of flight
Trailing feet, or by six pins to balance
Above the shore on a swollen blue lupine, tender,
Almost sore with sap, to shimmer there,
Specific and alone, two yellow wings
Like splinters of morning.
One yearned simultaneously to be invisible,
In the way the oak toad is invisible among
The ashy debris of the scrub-forest floor;
To be grandiose as deserts are grandiose
With punctata and peccaries, Joshua tree,
Saguaro and the mule-ears blossom; to be precise
As the long gleaming hairs of the gourami, swaying
And touching, find the moss and roughage
Of the pond bottom with precision; to stitch
And stitch (that dream!) slowly and exactly
As a woman at her tapestry with needle and thread
Sews each succeeding canopy of the rain forest
And with silver threads creates at last
The shining eyes of the capuchins huddled
Among the black leaves of the upper branches.
One longed to be able to taste the salt
Of pity, to hold by bones the stone of grief,
To take in by acknowledgment the light
Of spring lilies in a purple vase, five white
Birds flying before a thunderhead, to become
Infinite by reflection, announcing out loud
In one's own language, by one's own voice,
The fabrication of these desires, this day
Of their recitation.
|
|
|
 PATTIANN ROGERS was born in Joplin, Missouri, and
graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA from the University of Missouri in
1961. She received a Master of Arts from the University of Houston in
1981. She has taught at the University of Texas, the University of
Montana, Washington University of St. Louis, and Mercer University as the
Ferrol Sams Distinguished Writer-in-Residence. She taught in the Creative
Writing Program during the spring semesters, 1993 to 1997, at the
University of Arkansas. She is the mother of two sons and a
daughter-in-law and lives with her husband, a retired geophysicist, in
Colorado.
Rogers has published ten books, most recently Song of the World
Becoming, New and Collected Poems, 1981 - 2001 (Milkweed Editions).
This book contains all of her poems previously published in books, plus
forty new poems, and line and title indexes, It was a finalist for the LA
Times Book Award and was named an Editor's Choice, Top of the List by
Booklist.
Her sixth book, Firekeeper, New and Selected Poems was chosen by
Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books Published in 1994 and was one
of five finalists for the Lenore Marshall Award given by the Academy of
American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in the
United States in 1994. It also received the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award
from the Texas Institute of Letters.
|
