Marjorie Deiter Keyishian
Talking Birds
At dawn, bird after bird calls out. I hear
that chat, those assertions, that hold
onto, that claim one oak or another,
that call, friend to friend, or lover,
whichever. I am a part of the talk
that starts just before five and cheers me,
so I can wake or fall back deep into sleep
filled with dream after dream that can enchant
or weave what is with what I need to know.
Or else entwine this worry, this knot, tale
that tackles all, entangles. But bird talk
rescues me, morn after morn, if just for now.
Talking Wood
On the first blue day, birds write north
all over the sky, except for these robins.
One or two to a branch, they layer blue
spruce and pine whose limbs form skeletal
arabesques, delicate backbones,
sending loop after wooden loop
high and higher. In those wooden arches,
I can read the vertebrae of curly
cabbage leaves, and perhaps those great discs
of wheeling stars also echo
the delicate joining of rib to spine,
the web of twig breathing green
out of the chubby buds, packed
tightly with leaf and leaf
reveling in the rite to uncurl.
No one need remember the rain,
freezing as it fell,
or the wind that came up one day
when every twig was weighed down, crystal
branches catching moonlight, so that
they chimed, glowing yellow, then pink
with the dawn, before they broke.
Written in these woods, for anyone to read
are that hordes of seedlings struggled,
trees bent as they tunneled up
at whatever angle---to where the sun
shines, a point in the dark, and above
they open; that rustling green song
filling heartwood, and roots and all.
Written in the fallen spruce
shielding the rooting seed,
written in the oak that has no need
to remember the ring upon ring of lean
years and kind soaking rain and sun
just above the hundred thousand curlicues.
That the velvet green of August night
dissolves to feed grub, earth,
and nesting bird is written in thick
layers underfoot, of leaf and thin blue shell.
Survivors, who saw it all, are salt
As the sea and speak no more distinctly.
Shiny Day
And then I dreamed it was the shiny day
of your wedding. A simple white dress, maybe
daisies, or do I invent them? You and I
walking through luminous green fields, singing
under the curving green leaves of dogwoods
hung with those delicate white flowers, perhaps a river
rippling blue against some flat white rock.
Two perhaps three hours, we strolled till, late, we
turned, quick as hares, back to catch wedding guests
fed, we hoped, so they would wait to see you
walking the petal-strewn path to marry.
So sweet a time it kept the morn at bay.
December Thirty-One
The year is falling apart. Each year does
will us to die with it. We must invoke
the gold we know: moonlight as lucid
as silver foil, wax candles as gold,
as red, as the sun once was, long days ago.
If we wake early, it is to darkness.
The real children must be told it’s morning.
Light comes later, and then it’s thin, watery,
unconvincing—a brief interval
in a continuum which is the night,
naturally black; the holes that are stars
too far gone to be more than a story
we invented some time ago, winter’s
infant, in which we must believe, the light.
Old
She’s old for a nightly climb
Up the treacherous, steep stairs of night,
a ragged thing in tatters of light,
decently curtained by clouds, by rain.
She groans. The awful weight of that pocked
carcass making its nightly round is more
than the delicate fox’s ear can bear.
He howls out a roar that beggars thunder.
People are sleeping, each in a cell.
The yip and moan of their angry children,
their shuttered dreams and the leer of the owl
are enough, are more than enough.
Were she to appear, whole and glowing,
no one would wake to see her shining there.
Marjorie Deiter Keyishian is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Slow Runner (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Demeter’s Daughters (Pudding House Publications, 2010). Her other published books are Stephen King (with Amy Keyishian;Chelsea House Publishers, 1996) and Who’s in the Truck? (Joshua Morris Publishing, 1995). Her poetry has been published in a wide range of magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, Graham House Review, The Literary Review, TheLaurel Review, South Mountain Poets, Black Mountain II Review, New York Quarterly, Tifaret, The English Record, Paterson Literary Review, Snowy Egret, Northeast Journal, The Smith, Outerbridge and The Journal of New Jersey Poets.
Talking Birds
At dawn, bird after bird calls out. I hear
that chat, those assertions, that hold
onto, that claim one oak or another,
that call, friend to friend, or lover,
whichever. I am a part of the talk
that starts just before five and cheers me,
so I can wake or fall back deep into sleep
filled with dream after dream that can enchant
or weave what is with what I need to know.
Or else entwine this worry, this knot, tale
that tackles all, entangles. But bird talk
rescues me, morn after morn, if just for now.
Talking Wood
On the first blue day, birds write north
all over the sky, except for these robins.
One or two to a branch, they layer blue
spruce and pine whose limbs form skeletal
arabesques, delicate backbones,
sending loop after wooden loop
high and higher. In those wooden arches,
I can read the vertebrae of curly
cabbage leaves, and perhaps those great discs
of wheeling stars also echo
the delicate joining of rib to spine,
the web of twig breathing green
out of the chubby buds, packed
tightly with leaf and leaf
reveling in the rite to uncurl.
No one need remember the rain,
freezing as it fell,
or the wind that came up one day
when every twig was weighed down, crystal
branches catching moonlight, so that
they chimed, glowing yellow, then pink
with the dawn, before they broke.
Written in these woods, for anyone to read
are that hordes of seedlings struggled,
trees bent as they tunneled up
at whatever angle---to where the sun
shines, a point in the dark, and above
they open; that rustling green song
filling heartwood, and roots and all.
Written in the fallen spruce
shielding the rooting seed,
written in the oak that has no need
to remember the ring upon ring of lean
years and kind soaking rain and sun
just above the hundred thousand curlicues.
That the velvet green of August night
dissolves to feed grub, earth,
and nesting bird is written in thick
layers underfoot, of leaf and thin blue shell.
Survivors, who saw it all, are salt
As the sea and speak no more distinctly.
Shiny Day
And then I dreamed it was the shiny day
of your wedding. A simple white dress, maybe
daisies, or do I invent them? You and I
walking through luminous green fields, singing
under the curving green leaves of dogwoods
hung with those delicate white flowers, perhaps a river
rippling blue against some flat white rock.
Two perhaps three hours, we strolled till, late, we
turned, quick as hares, back to catch wedding guests
fed, we hoped, so they would wait to see you
walking the petal-strewn path to marry.
So sweet a time it kept the morn at bay.
December Thirty-One
The year is falling apart. Each year does
will us to die with it. We must invoke
the gold we know: moonlight as lucid
as silver foil, wax candles as gold,
as red, as the sun once was, long days ago.
If we wake early, it is to darkness.
The real children must be told it’s morning.
Light comes later, and then it’s thin, watery,
unconvincing—a brief interval
in a continuum which is the night,
naturally black; the holes that are stars
too far gone to be more than a story
we invented some time ago, winter’s
infant, in which we must believe, the light.
Old
She’s old for a nightly climb
Up the treacherous, steep stairs of night,
a ragged thing in tatters of light,
decently curtained by clouds, by rain.
She groans. The awful weight of that pocked
carcass making its nightly round is more
than the delicate fox’s ear can bear.
He howls out a roar that beggars thunder.
People are sleeping, each in a cell.
The yip and moan of their angry children,
their shuttered dreams and the leer of the owl
are enough, are more than enough.
Were she to appear, whole and glowing,
no one would wake to see her shining there.
Marjorie Deiter Keyishian is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Slow Runner (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Demeter’s Daughters (Pudding House Publications, 2010). Her other published books are Stephen King (with Amy Keyishian;Chelsea House Publishers, 1996) and Who’s in the Truck? (Joshua Morris Publishing, 1995). Her poetry has been published in a wide range of magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, Graham House Review, The Literary Review, TheLaurel Review, South Mountain Poets, Black Mountain II Review, New York Quarterly, Tifaret, The English Record, Paterson Literary Review, Snowy Egret, Northeast Journal, The Smith, Outerbridge and The Journal of New Jersey Poets.