the language of

flowers

  
it’s the language of attractiveness
like gravity like red cells swimming
inside arteries like summer nights
like jasmine says to a nose

and steady stance won’t you come
listening like a bee surely does
fluttering wings and molecules

a hunger for something sweet
like unreasonable beauty does
like honey on your tongue

all that’s wanting waiting to be
already is, like frosty breath like
hands in pockets huddled twice

till dancing toes draw the map
like does the sea like does the sky
and the moon and shadows too

and I wouldn’t speak your name
except I got nothing more to say
of matter much, besides

the flowers are shouting now
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

late autumn phrase

  
what language a winter tree bereft
of leaves save some scattered folk?

is it a curtain furrowed clean to reveal
seeds? or breath amidst bleating oars?

a chance for splayed phrases to
gather round a swaying sketch.

birds grey on a wire high like some
sentence gone silent in

flightless hieroglyph.

yet when my sight departs
what thought remains of early
morning frosted breath?

bare, but for some few whited
wings.
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

m o s a i c   i n c a n t a t i o n s

  
what are the hundred words I haven’t said to you?

milkshake raspberry diphthong happenstance somnolent

what face without vocabulary is there to embrace?

cracked splintered fractured broken flummoxed

what whispers, where? touching your ear, and

entwine embracements constituent double-stitched

what spoon in your fingers do you choose?

celebrant candled illuminance embellish adorn

what truth is like a broken bowl?

what the milkman says to the porch
what the stranger said about the calendar
what grandmother laid upon the table as feast
what salt bestowed to tongue with a single touch
what wheat-spun hair draped itself like snow

you knew all along, didn’t you?
 
 

neil reid © january 2012

Commentary
There’s more water than land that makes up this place we call home. So how’s this poem address the prompt (I’ll let you read that for yourself as linked below)? Like an ink blot response would be one answer (although a boring one). Yet I’ve become some becalmed by much I write, looking for new understanding of the landscape, and while this may not be all so realized – it is closer. There is so much we yet do not understand about so elemental a thing as waves, how much less then what language might be able to say. Said years ago in another lifetime, this may not be the perfect answer, this may be rather unorthodox, but I feel more happy. So be it.

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #89, Respond to this.
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

  
here’s the poem that’s in my fingertips.

here’s the poem that does it right, regardless
of any self doubts, in fact, allows your very own
experience to bloom in a way you’d thought
before impossible.

notice your part, the lines you write.

here’s the dog that greeted you today, that
unabashedly leaned into your hands, that
poured life into you from its’ own willing wet
snout.

here’s the poem you didn’t expect to read.
yet you did.

here’s the meal you thought was lost.

here’s the kernel, the seed of corn.

here’s the coat when cold, the hat when
it rains.  here’s the shoes, here your feet.

then somebody says, here, I gotta show you this.
and it’s like rain, the same everywhere everywhen,
but it’s not.  the face is different now.

it looks like you looking me.

here’s the weeds you forgot to pull.
we are not a matter of beliefs.

even when we turn our backs
here remains.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

 
 
And here, a poem I won’t explain.

a natural history of my kitchen

  
this is mother’s kitchen.
it was someone else’s before she bought
this place on wheels, moved, left the cat behind,
just what old farm people do,
made it hers.

it was someone else’s good idea, but then
she filled it with high stacked canned goods and
just around the corner two books of black and white,
photographs, people, mostly nameless to me.

when her memory began to go, so went the captions
to all those decades long since floating by.

there’s mom there’s dad (only a few), grandmother
janet too, a great uncle named lew, and the rest,
just ghosts that lay down flat between the pages
falling loose, there, right beside the kitchen now.

glue don’t last forever, that’s clear.

then somebody says, here, I gotta show you this.

and here’s the table where we sat, where she sat,
a formica thing, shiny, window-like, made to look like
wood which it wasn’t, pride of 1950’s practicality.
that’s where I took the photograph, mom and her ghost
on the tabletop.  now there’s two, the both of them.

and here’s the cooking trick when she lost the words
to say what she really liked, and she was always
polite.

      do you like that mom, what I cooked?
her response was always yes, but I learned, when
she asked for seconds, yes please, another plate,
that’s how we discovered truth.

and when I broke my wrist, came to stay with you
because I couldn’t open a can, couldn’t feed the cat,
so you did, just that, and I cooked the rest while
the cat hid behind the stranger’s couch.

the window facing east above the sink, ate the dawns,
right beside where the toast was made, the spinach
deveined, the drawer that wouldn’t close all the way,
big knives in another that stuck.

dishes in cabinets older than me,
back when plum blossoms carpeted the valley
in their own spring snow.

the doors beneath the sink held closed by
a rubber band.  time has a way with place.

magnetic cat on the refrigerator, another with
the doctor’s phone. years later a page from me
with a photograph, less dimmed than memory.

saying, this is your home, I come visit, go to the
grocery, cook dinner with you, and here, here’s
my phone number when you forget.

still there to this day even if she’s not.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

Commentary
Overly sentimental perhaps? Yet maybe because so much clear definition of my family history is rather dim, I keep looking what remnants I do have at hand. What was the story of mother and father? Mostly I don’t know and never will, so it is a history of crumbs left behind. Such is my small illumination, the captions to images of memory. Prompt answered – so be it.

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #86, A Natural History of My (room).
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

click to see this image in full size resolution

dead reckoning

 
windows don’t fuss about truth.  neither
shy amending what’s swallowed and given
up to waiting sight.  transparency isn’t that
truancy of breath as often thought.

my heart could break.  says mosaic truth
mended by winter weeds, sand on gathered
stone.  seeing you as I do.

reflection is the expected refrain.
refraction fingertips illuminate a language
native to wonderment, just so many waterfalls
rising out of rocks.  faces falling, assuming
the shape of rain.

here, here’s my single edge, moments
I can’t stand seeing anything not your face.

your body is the meal consumed.
no ill intent.  passion, simply vision insists.
just what translucency must need do.

window pronounces blue sky defines white
water clouds shimmers falls dew infused on
pearlescent lips.  what story heard depends
upon where you stand.

that’s why cats tilt their sight between autumn
leaves.  ready for the brightest slightest face
suddenly revealed.

each face so much water rolling over
rounded rocks.  turn up your pants, bare
feet splashing ahead.

coyote says, throw yourself, not knowing who
you’ll be on the other side.  maybe wilderness.

one kiss.  one face swimming bright.
landing here in my hands.

the one path of many set loose.
I call your name and the river comes.
you hear it too, and repeat.

I am here.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

Commentary
This image as a source for a poem prompt was near too rich, so many voices wanting to speak themselves. Of course I would make my choices, yet I wanted to share that process – not be neat, concise, just for that sake alone. In result there are actually several threads twisting themselves throughout this poem – what I hope (and realized) is exactly how the image appears to me, no one single understanding alone. I think that’s a kindness to the environment given here.

As well, and as previously posted, I’m wanting to allow a new poetry to be for me. Less clever, more honest (much as that seems too grand to portend). I suspect at best my writing must stumble even more than before.
Meaning I’ve not much clue what to do!

So the choices here are more raw. Not one thread, but many. What the window says and is, and something more intimate too, because that’s really how we respond – isn’t it?

Written for the We Write Poems, prompt #84, Window faces.
Please find the prompt responses of other writers here.

 
I am not the words.  I am the sleeve.

I am run out of cleverness.  I have run

my mile and here, my shoes are spent.

There is nothing lost to claim, nothing

with a name attached, neither any

ribbon to undo.  Neither are we

emptiness.  Rather, simply, we thirst.

Vanity has tendered its’ best, failed

twice, tried to live on seemly crumbs.

We move from light to light.  I forget.

Release my name with your breath.

That will be the better truth of me.

Old comforts are forsaken now.

Poems are bones, shells on the shore.

One comfort alone endures,

I am not the words.  I am the sleeve.
 
 

neil reid © december 2011

I pray, nay, I beseech you to see
that you are but a whisper
on the lips of God.

I beseech you to see
that as a whisper, you pass on ever so soon,
like a line of poetry
written on the waters of creation.

But yet the greatness of a whisper
is that it is passed on…

     C.P. Thorp.

7-December-2011 post-Commentary

This poem was written before the WWP prompt was even selected. The poem and prompt were tangentially coincident. However I do think the poem applies, well enough at any rate to share as responsive to the prompt. (All Good Things, write about an ending while also looking forward toward what might be the next relevant beginning.) Thanks Nicole.

Regards the prompt I wrote a list of “endings” I might write about. However I knew I’d really already written the poem, this one right here – that it was and is about an ending to my poem writing (and no, I don’t mean I’ll stop writing poems). Yet I clearly feel some ending (but don’t ask me what that means), and what that means in terms of change (can’t answer that either yet). Maybe the change won’t even be obvious (being just how ignorant I am at this point).

There are significant changes (endings) in my life currently, however where I personally sense it the most is in poem sensibility. I feel both “done” with something and waiting for “next” to arrive.

Neither feel quite done with waving goodbye yet. My only clarity is my lack of clarity. I wonder what the good poets are doing tonight?

You may read other’s We Write Poems prompt responses here.

 
that gossamer leaves of butterflies
can move against the wind.  they do.

that people will see their lives like stars.
light is just this genuine.

that fish will fly and birds will swim.
see how easy it already is!

that loneliness is just a meditation
we forgot about.  take heart.
 

that moon and sea rejoice their marriage
tides.  in like kind, cleopatra’s embrace.

 
that poems are more than the script
they seem to speak.  you tell me.

that we will pass through the eye
of a needle.  we may.  we may.
 
 
 

neil reid © november 2011

 
in respect,
what did this poem teach me?, that’s the question I’ll address.  to begin, a simple theme, then came the seventh to write (as here, the stanza that stands by itself from the rest).  as I first thought of it (some different from here) it was not the same as the rest, being more the obvious statment of actual relationship, moon to seas.  I thought, I twisted the words, but it still came out the same that way.  too many thoughts (eventually also obvious).  then realized a better obvious – stop writing the poem and let the words, the language, determine their right place.  and if that place was indeed some different, then let it be, yet as here acknowledged, set the stanza slightly aside physically.  (writing not being so much about “making” as “allowing” from my point of view.)  writers I think need respect their language and that it has as much or more ability than the writer does.  although oddly found, once I’d let go of having it be right, meaning the same as the rest, it became more that way of itself.  funny how that works.

old axiom: writing is more about learning than the other way around.

 
Dear Bill,

How long’s it been?  Sorry I missed you last time around.  Suppose you’re still writing there, just like you always do, granddaughter or not nibbling at your toes, adoring you, eating your attention just like pie.  Funny how she stole herself into the early dawn, you in your writing time, suddenly then less alone.  But you never said stop, dissuading her bloom, but just awoke some earlier yourself to keep coin with your words.  Poetic, one might say, how you hold a hand.  Yea, just like you.

There was this dream, did I tell you Bill, and I was that grandchild you see.  And I drank up every word you ever said to me.  And your hands, your hands, oh I remember them, how they held the very air itself.  Then clear as a feather rings in flight, there you were, shovel in hand and standing right beside where a ditch was waiting to be dug and I knew, no matter at all, if that’s what you did, how you lived your life, that’s the book I wanted to know.  And now everything I read of yours takes its’ sound, reads from that first pantomime.

Quietly, in the middle of dark, things can recognize themselves, can’t they Bill?
Like a sunlit day would never expect.  That night shrouded light in a barn visible by only a solitary traveler, bright inside.  And you’re right, if we’re not listening we can lose our feet, like it was another randomized flock of sheep.  Yet one moment can fill everything without needing to change a thing.

It’s just like you said.

Yours sincerely, my blue pen

PS. You saved someone once.  Maybe me.  But you didn’t know, so it’s not your fault.  Neither the poems now.  Not your fault, no more than the man left standing who missed his train.

Then sometimes seems we’ve missed a life – when it’s only about to arrive.  We’ll call it a nudge rightly imbued.  See, new shoes!  And thanks.

neil reid © november 2011

Written for We Write Poems prompt #81  Dear (poem)
Write a letter. Write a poem-letter to be specific. Address it to some historic figure you’d like to send a letter. Formal or personal, that’s your choice; you can be “the best of friends” or “respectful strangers”, howsoever you desire. Read the poem responses of others here.

William Stafford was an American poet (1914-1993). While his poems were not the first I ever read, they were the first I ever cared about, and came into sight just when I first seriously took upon myself this craft of language and expression. And to this day there is no poet whose words so well fit my ear.

 
goodness!, the minister said
but that’s what most of them say

when we haven’t been afraid
we’ve been someone we hardly recognize

when you’re standing upon a rock
there’s one way the wind don’t blow – down

all things with wings know this truth,
bend, gets you where you wanna go

truth be told, if you wanna tell the truth
be no more of importance than is the wind

summer that’s when we found ripe corn
but spring, fall, no fruit without their hands

horses don’t eat bricks, and neither
should we swallow convincing lies

shaking brings wheat to the roots
much as how grandfather said to listen

stumbling is said to be expected, some even
say, when done well, it becomes a dance

it’s often hard to believe your life is a candle
but you gotta see, light never lies

beneath your layered clothes
life gets really close

cover your voice with an open door
to reveal what you thought was lost

neil reid © november 2011

Written for We Write Poems prompt #80 by Pamela Sayers.
Bread Crumbs do a poem make
Accumulate a minimum of twelve words, and write little snapshots of time, memory etc… two line “poemlets”. These poemlets could stand alone or relate to some degree. Read the poem responses of others here.

my twelve words were selected from a poem,
Our Cave, by William Stafford

good afraid
down bend
tell summer
horses shaking
stumbling candle
close covered
(OK, so I see words in pairs, although they may or may not relate that way in the poem here.)

 
comments:
Thank you Pamela. This was good for me, still some lingering myself in I don’t wanna write. So brief fits the bill just right for me.