Hokis

This is the poem I brought into my poetry workshop today. I'd written it a good while ago and re-worked it substantially so the idea is similar but re-directed.

I'm totally bragging when I say Prof. Digges responded to the class by saying "folks, were in the presence of a great poem. No corrections." It was a good day.

****

Here is the truth: you were anticipated.

There were times when, in the grey constancy of our
struggled aversions,
I’d wondered about you.
if you’d thrill over a truly fantastic marinade-
romanticize me as a mother-
could be talked into a second helping-
would tolerate incessant harmonies-
wouldn’t mind reading to me-
would speak with open urgency of going home-
if your t-shirts would fit me-
if you’d let me have a bite. Or five.
these were the thousands foundlings at the freshest genesis.

It was Spring, and the “better things” promise was alive,
the weight of blossom bowing it’s gentle head like a lily of the valley.
I wore my inadequacies emblazoned upon my chest-
Yours were in skywriting boldly across the orange evening that fell upon the West --
a zero lightning line, that horizon, and even then,
fearless.

These love things, these unspeakable love…things…
“And there was evening, and there was morning—the
sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth in all their vast
array.” (Genesis 1:31)

you stayed at my mouth.
found shelter there, find sanctuary
and under the roof of that chapel there breathed
breath so warm--
alive--
to evaporate the shadows that shrouded my tongue,
and there with joined flesh to taste
(the gothic arches at the corners of our mouths and)
sweet so soft, that not all the hungry residue
at our cheeks could extinguish the flame called up inside of these,
the walls of our new cathedral.
I’ve learned that I love my body
when it is with your body.
Facedown in our bed months later
we enlaced our fingers and closed our eyes:
we were children fumbling through a prayer built on breath,
exhaling our desired perception of our sweet selves.

That’s some courage, you know
to pray with someone watching you,
to ask for things for yourself and for them when their ears are open to every failure,
when your own mouth can form the words to God before him.


Months from now,
buried in your sweater I will not find your scent
strong enough to keep you there:
over my shoulders, between my legs.
Atop my pillows.
Out on the back porch smoking stoically into the unscripted sky.

In those sheets I will ignore your parallel hollow in the feather bed,
rolling across it into kind of birth, a new advent.

In days I will be your body:
the churlish curve of your ears and the softest skin on your brow,
each of your teeth and all of the space between your vertebrae.
I will reinvent my skin for you.
Our Season, re-sharpened, re-gilded, safely re-sheathed,
and will not sleep till then.

“Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse ‘sky'. And there was evening, and there was morning.”
(Genesis 1:6-8)

What magicians;
we have blown the sky off the very world.




***


This evening I recorded my audition tape for my applications with the Chorale. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as it could've been, and with luck I'll get back both a VHS to send in with my apps, and a dvd to post here. Right now I'm listening through Handel's Chandos Anthem for the Church (Dec 16th). I love having music to learn, especially holding the hard copy in front of me and marking it up, what scale degree to listen for, where I'll get my note from, how to phrase the measures, how to count it...makes me feel like a really strong musician to look back at my scores after a performance.

There are Christmas lights and a little Christmas tree up in my room that Emma brought back from her house. I think this is my first Christmas tree of my own. Lights too, I guess, because the chili peppers I had up in my room in high school just don't count. The tree and these lights kind of walk the line between making me feel warm and celebratory, and lonely in that pathetic "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" sort of way. Right now they're feeling warm, so I'm gonna run with that.

I keep forgetting I have Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge...harumph...yay yams!