A day off from hiking/writing has given me some space to work on some poetry - here's one that I've been tinkering with today with Veronica in mind ...STEAMBOAT ROCK (for JC)
Some of us cling
To life like lichen
On rock
Others barely hold,
Like moss loosely anchored
To stone,
A breeze could take you down.
You were still there,
A warm shadow
On the rock
You were always first
To get to camp
Or reach a summit
You never needed to wait
Because it all came to you
No one else knew
The roads you took
To this place
Broken by glaciers
And shaken by ice
Now you can rest
And let the eagles take
You the rest of the way
By Karen Sykes
Monday, October 4, 2010
Three poems
THE BANK
The doors open
Automatically
Inside
Women are counting mirrors
And filing them away.
Above them
Are paintings of cities
No one has ever been to.
People stand in line
Waiting to cash their checks.
Eventually the checks
Turn into leaves
And the people turn into trees.
Very late in the afternoon
The sun comes in
And covers them with wild birds.
Karen Waring
FURNITURE
Nobody lived there.
Everythinig died except the books.
They rustled like candy wrappers
In a dark movie.
The movie went on and on
And still the books
Slept,
Dreaming
With their mouths open.
Karen Waring
POEM BEGINNING WITH FOUR LINES FROM A VIKING POEM
“Hard it is on earth ….
Ax-time, sword-time …
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls
Nor ever shall men each other spare ….”
Hard it is in our houses
Strange cars
Circle at dark
Hard it is in our houses
With our dreams and pills,
Phones that never stop ringing,
Digital devices tether us
To the housewives of
No place
And
457 things you can do
To prevent cancer
Strange hunters gather in taverns;
Bird-shaped men sit at the bar,
Their eyes do not blink.
Paintings and lost alphabets
Hang on ruined walls,
The bones of a dead child
Propped between dead continents
Paces in our dreams
This restless age.
(Do you remember the cold nights,
The sullen fires,
The ice that followed?
Do you remember the frosty paws of lions
Crossing Africa when pain was young?)
Hard it is on earth,
Hard it is in our lives
On long nights
When cars circle our houses
And the stars
Scratch in the dark
Like paws
Karen Waring
The doors open
Automatically
Inside
Women are counting mirrors
And filing them away.
Above them
Are paintings of cities
No one has ever been to.
People stand in line
Waiting to cash their checks.
Eventually the checks
Turn into leaves
And the people turn into trees.
Very late in the afternoon
The sun comes in
And covers them with wild birds.
Karen Waring
FURNITURE
Nobody lived there.
Everythinig died except the books.
They rustled like candy wrappers
In a dark movie.
The movie went on and on
And still the books
Slept,
Dreaming
With their mouths open.
Karen Waring
POEM BEGINNING WITH FOUR LINES FROM A VIKING POEM
“Hard it is on earth ….
Ax-time, sword-time …
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls
Nor ever shall men each other spare ….”
Hard it is in our houses
Strange cars
Circle at dark
Hard it is in our houses
With our dreams and pills,
Phones that never stop ringing,
Digital devices tether us
To the housewives of
No place
And
457 things you can do
To prevent cancer
Strange hunters gather in taverns;
Bird-shaped men sit at the bar,
Their eyes do not blink.
Paintings and lost alphabets
Hang on ruined walls,
The bones of a dead child
Propped between dead continents
Paces in our dreams
This restless age.
(Do you remember the cold nights,
The sullen fires,
The ice that followed?
Do you remember the frosty paws of lions
Crossing Africa when pain was young?)
Hard it is on earth,
Hard it is in our lives
On long nights
When cars circle our houses
And the stars
Scratch in the dark
Like paws
Karen Waring
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Snow Geese in April (for Jane)
Finally, this aging poet has written a new poem.
Here it is,
Snow Geese in April (for Jane)
Snow geese
Like flying ribbons
Of confetti
Cross the sky
Then settle as silently
As snow
On muddy fields
Bursting with seed
Mount Baker
Rises above a crazy quilt
Of tulips
Like a porcelain plate
Propped against
A dark mantle of ridges
We have come late
To the garden
Full of girlish chatter
Belying our age
Speaking of journeys
And mountains to climb,
Whether the traveler
Crosses continents
Or ponders
The silent galaxy
Of spiders hatching
Under an eave
Karen Sykes (Waring)
Roozengaarde, April 16, 2010
Snow geese
Like flying ribbons
Of confetti
Cross the sky
Then settle as silently
As snow
On muddy fields
Bursting with seed
Mount Baker
Rises above a crazy quilt
Of tulips
Like a porcelain plate
Propped against
A dark mantle of ridges
We have come late
To the garden
Full of girlish chatter
Belying our age
Speaking of journeys
And mountains to climb,
Whether the traveler
Crosses continents
Or ponders
The silent galaxy
Of spiders hatching
Under an eave
Karen Sykes (Waring)
Roozengaarde, April 16, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Poem for HB
Poem for HB
Bad heart, bad legs, bad weather
Did not keep you off the mountain
You said no matter what mountain
You are on
You can always see the next one
A lifetime of mountains is not enough,
One more summit, one more handhold,
One more sunrise smeared across the windshield
On a slow winter morning,
Almost wrecking the car
Because you saw another mountain
You had not climbed
You fooled them, bushwhacked
Through
The wilderness of
Fading arteries,
To climb another mountain
Before the heart stutters,
The boots fray and the mind finally forgets that
Which you swore should never be forgotten:
One ancient stump with springboard notches,
One old snag leaning against
The cold silk of a winter sky
You stopped and wondered: what happened
To those loggers? Where did they go?
You know what happened to the loggers.
You know what happened to the trees.
And you know what will happen to us.
I look at the photograph
Of the first mountain you climbed
After surgery, your tracks in the snow
Heading to the summit like a grin and I ask:
Who will come after you?
Who will remember the loggers
That hauled their heavy gear up impossible mountains?
Who will remember the fresh green stink
Of fallen cedar and the hot white hands of booze?
Who will remember the smoky rooms
And the women who smelled like blackberries?
You know that the men who are afraid
To live, live anyway.
You will not
Wait for the lights in the mind
To go out, one by one
You will not drift down the
Slow river
Of nursing homes, clutching oxygen tubes and
Climbing to some awful summit.
When you fall, you will fall
With a piece of the mountain
Under your fingernails
So you might as well tussle
For one more kiss, or work out
A system for the lottery
You might as well
Walk out of the house
And climb into your car,
You might as well drive to the mountains
Get out of the car and leave the headlights on
And start walking,
You might as well take the trail the loggers
Took those cool blue mornings before
The sun came up,
You might as well reach out
And touch the fog and feel the sleek hours
Of the morning rubbing against you
Like a lover as you head toward some
Summit you have never seen.
Karen Sykes (Waring)
Bad heart, bad legs, bad weather
Did not keep you off the mountain
You said no matter what mountain
You are on
You can always see the next one
A lifetime of mountains is not enough,
One more summit, one more handhold,
One more sunrise smeared across the windshield
On a slow winter morning,
Almost wrecking the car
Because you saw another mountain
You had not climbed
You fooled them, bushwhacked
Through
The wilderness of
Fading arteries,
To climb another mountain
Before the heart stutters,
The boots fray and the mind finally forgets that
Which you swore should never be forgotten:
One ancient stump with springboard notches,
One old snag leaning against
The cold silk of a winter sky
You stopped and wondered: what happened
To those loggers? Where did they go?
You know what happened to the loggers.
You know what happened to the trees.
And you know what will happen to us.
I look at the photograph
Of the first mountain you climbed
After surgery, your tracks in the snow
Heading to the summit like a grin and I ask:
Who will come after you?
Who will remember the loggers
That hauled their heavy gear up impossible mountains?
Who will remember the fresh green stink
Of fallen cedar and the hot white hands of booze?
Who will remember the smoky rooms
And the women who smelled like blackberries?
You know that the men who are afraid
To live, live anyway.
You will not
Wait for the lights in the mind
To go out, one by one
You will not drift down the
Slow river
Of nursing homes, clutching oxygen tubes and
Climbing to some awful summit.
When you fall, you will fall
With a piece of the mountain
Under your fingernails
So you might as well tussle
For one more kiss, or work out
A system for the lottery
You might as well
Walk out of the house
And climb into your car,
You might as well drive to the mountains
Get out of the car and leave the headlights on
And start walking,
You might as well take the trail the loggers
Took those cool blue mornings before
The sun came up,
You might as well reach out
And touch the fog and feel the sleek hours
Of the morning rubbing against you
Like a lover as you head toward some
Summit you have never seen.
Karen Sykes (Waring)
Horsetails
Horsetails
There is no way to kill them,
Devils guts, they are called
It is little consolation
That dinosaurs brushed by them
In ancient starlight
Nothing halts their advance;
Not even poison
At night I hear them
Breathing under the house
At dawn the spiders come
Sewing the weeds together
With dew
Yet I cannot help but envy
Their fierce determination to live
Even when not wanted,
Not like us
That can sicken from love
They will survive us all
After cities fall
And the sun has spoken
They will survive
In feeble light or
Shade,
Broken asphalt or
Beside silver streams
No use to say
This is not the garden I wanted:
That I wanted poppies to
Dance in the yard like gypsies
Or that I wanted to run to you
Like I did that cold day in the cold mountains
When you wrapped me in your wool
Shirt and said “forever”.
Karen Sykes-Waring
There is no way to kill them,
Devils guts, they are called
It is little consolation
That dinosaurs brushed by them
In ancient starlight
Nothing halts their advance;
Not even poison
At night I hear them
Breathing under the house
At dawn the spiders come
Sewing the weeds together
With dew
Yet I cannot help but envy
Their fierce determination to live
Even when not wanted,
Not like us
That can sicken from love
They will survive us all
After cities fall
And the sun has spoken
They will survive
In feeble light or
Shade,
Broken asphalt or
Beside silver streams
No use to say
This is not the garden I wanted:
That I wanted poppies to
Dance in the yard like gypsies
Or that I wanted to run to you
Like I did that cold day in the cold mountains
When you wrapped me in your wool
Shirt and said “forever”.
Karen Sykes-Waring
Friday, November 13, 2009
Ants
ANTS
After September I stopped killing the soft moths that fluttered silently through the house. They could have my sweaters, they could lay their eggs in my wool shirts, even the blue sweater John liked best. There were brown smears on the wall from moths I’d crushed on their way to the light that dazzled and drew them. I left the stains to remind myself that they had lived once like me, were hungry and fed at the light, seeking warmth.
This morning I find one dead in my cup, wings folded shut as if in prayer. I don’t know where they come from, these moths. At night as I read their soft shadows move across the sour yellow light of a dim lamp, a crooked lampshade, a pile of mail torn open and forgotten.
I remember stagnant August, a hot tent and ants. We’d camped near Timothy Meadows in the Chiwaukum Mountains under a sky heavy with rain to fall, the ponderosa pines scarcely breathing. The grass held still like grass in a painting. We pitched our tents in a hurry to beat the rain – we could smell it coming. It smelled like an old road, it felt like something was going to happen.
We finished as the first quarter-sized drops of rain fell, as the trees shuddered like dancers raising their arms. We ran to our tents and I discovered I’d pitched the tent on an ant hill. Hundreds of ants were going about their business on the orange fabric of the Eureka – big, fat black ants with red heads, following the unwritten code of their genetic memory, onward in a blind path that did not deviate for such a minor obstacle as a wedge of orange fabric in the grass but simply crossed over it in their stubborn faith they would find what they sought, what pulled them through the grass but I did not think of that as I crushed them, killing as many as I could until my hands were covered with their substance like a thick jam, until I was sickened at this mindless genocide and I stopped as violently as I started, gently brushed the rest of them into the grass and crawled inside the tent, wanting to weep for the sudden sharp grief that made my throat ache with unshed tears as I lie in the tent waiting for rain.
(From a creative writing class, early 1990s)
After September I stopped killing the soft moths that fluttered silently through the house. They could have my sweaters, they could lay their eggs in my wool shirts, even the blue sweater John liked best. There were brown smears on the wall from moths I’d crushed on their way to the light that dazzled and drew them. I left the stains to remind myself that they had lived once like me, were hungry and fed at the light, seeking warmth.
This morning I find one dead in my cup, wings folded shut as if in prayer. I don’t know where they come from, these moths. At night as I read their soft shadows move across the sour yellow light of a dim lamp, a crooked lampshade, a pile of mail torn open and forgotten.
I remember stagnant August, a hot tent and ants. We’d camped near Timothy Meadows in the Chiwaukum Mountains under a sky heavy with rain to fall, the ponderosa pines scarcely breathing. The grass held still like grass in a painting. We pitched our tents in a hurry to beat the rain – we could smell it coming. It smelled like an old road, it felt like something was going to happen.
We finished as the first quarter-sized drops of rain fell, as the trees shuddered like dancers raising their arms. We ran to our tents and I discovered I’d pitched the tent on an ant hill. Hundreds of ants were going about their business on the orange fabric of the Eureka – big, fat black ants with red heads, following the unwritten code of their genetic memory, onward in a blind path that did not deviate for such a minor obstacle as a wedge of orange fabric in the grass but simply crossed over it in their stubborn faith they would find what they sought, what pulled them through the grass but I did not think of that as I crushed them, killing as many as I could until my hands were covered with their substance like a thick jam, until I was sickened at this mindless genocide and I stopped as violently as I started, gently brushed the rest of them into the grass and crawled inside the tent, wanting to weep for the sudden sharp grief that made my throat ache with unshed tears as I lie in the tent waiting for rain.
(From a creative writing class, early 1990s)
Careening
Stephan (A work in progress)
My whole life has been a rushing, a hurrying, a sort of careening. Friends stand by, astonished and perplexed. When I stop careening, it’s as if a bell had stopped clanging that had been ringing for a long time, the silence huge and strange.
Stephan once dreamed of me as a truck out of control without brakes on a downhill grade, careless, crashing into smaller vehicles on the way, damaging, hurting, blind, never looking back at the damage I caused.
It would seem I attach too much importance to my very existence; on the contrary I do not believe I am important at all, perhaps that is why I have floundered and flailed about the way I have done. I knew I was no one and that kind of knowledge is unbearable. I clawed at the eyes of the universe, I raged against obstacles of any kind, I begged other people to define me, to give me eyes and a name.
(Journals, early 1980s)
My whole life has been a rushing, a hurrying, a sort of careening. Friends stand by, astonished and perplexed. When I stop careening, it’s as if a bell had stopped clanging that had been ringing for a long time, the silence huge and strange.
Stephan once dreamed of me as a truck out of control without brakes on a downhill grade, careless, crashing into smaller vehicles on the way, damaging, hurting, blind, never looking back at the damage I caused.
It would seem I attach too much importance to my very existence; on the contrary I do not believe I am important at all, perhaps that is why I have floundered and flailed about the way I have done. I knew I was no one and that kind of knowledge is unbearable. I clawed at the eyes of the universe, I raged against obstacles of any kind, I begged other people to define me, to give me eyes and a name.
(Journals, early 1980s)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)