Roz's Poetry
Okay, so this isn't a complete body of work, by any means. These are the poems that largely figure in to the Wearable Poetry Project. In case you are looking for any poem in particular, they are listed alphabetically.
A Winter Morning
Bird-chirps in the dark resurrect
Spring’s scent, which spreads
Its fingers through the chest,
Between the ribs, renewing grayed flesh
And flushing out winter’s musty breath.
Beneath the blankets,
My chest rising up and down,
I burrow further in.
Across the Lake
A cloud stretches out
And dips,
Resting its head
Against the mountain’s
Bristled shoulder.
Baltimore in the Springtime
The squirrels have gone feral, their
Fuzzy clockwork thoughts
Have warped, and with the froth
From their mouths they spackle
Grievances on the bricks near the park.
The house-finches have revolted, turning
Into pin-feather ruffians, their lacquer-eyes glinting while
With crooked claws they scratch and peck,
Scuffling for every last speck.
The oak stands stooping near the quad, its upturned palms
And crackled-bark fingers strain, but can’t quite reach
The muttering feet at its base.
The trolley car’s tracks, bleached
In moon-stripped monochrome, stretch out
Like prison bars, a
Key left hanging in the latch.
Cryptocrystalline Mollusca
I.
Of old, the phoenix was never
A feathered thing, but bubbled
Up from the rift and roil
Of a thousand crushing layers,
Once ashen-ridged, now
Unearthed, an ember.
II.
The first flame was spilled
By a clever clam, who burrowed
Beneath, while the earth
Was still soft. He dug
Between igneous ribs that
Burned, and emerged in blazing,
Spectral glory.
III.
What fantastic passion must lay behind
Those walls of scaled gray bone and muck, that click
And spit salt bile from underneath the sand.
What other reason might there be to prove
How, from the clam’s chitin hood an opal buds,
Than that a clam, possessed of beauty hides
Its truth and fury close to its cold heart,
Until, at death, it bleeds its fire forth,
And soaks its shell in gleaming greens and reds.
From the Park & Ride, Coming Home
Two red cranes, like
night watchmen, stand,
cables strung from
narrow necks. One left
half-turned toward
the other,
chatting.
Alone in a crowd of
stooping roofs,
they have to
pass the time
til sunrise
somehow.
Grandfather Spider
A grandfather spider sits creaking,
he raises a leg to shed
the dust that creeps
up from the drooping strands
of his front porch.
he looks along the lines
of his estate:
every snag in his web a cracked window, every leaf or seed
that lingers,
a rusted truck gathering grass.
He coughs under his whiskers and pulls
his hound’s tooth coat tighter
around his girth,
raindrops clinging to his feet
like cufflinks, glinting
as he waits for a visitor
to come a-calling.
Haiku #1
A breeze from the west
Flutters leaves on the new growth
To say “hello.”
Haiku #2
The first crocuses
Thread color through the soil; spring
Begins to whisper.
Haiku #3
Gardens in Winter:
Ice encircles the branches,
Green waits to open.
Haiku #4
Seagull in the sky:
First turns away from sunset,
Then flies back, searching.
Haiku #5
The sun ripens
But it still hurts to look there.
Finally, a cloud.
Haiku #6
Mountains in the west
Only peek out at sunset
To make the sky blush.
Haiku #7
Gulls skirt the clouds
As they wither and darken.
The sun is setting.
Haiku #8
Color in the sky
Fades to gray in the west.
The sun stole it.
Haiku #9
Eastern sky at dusk:
Blue deepens around the moon.
The clouds thicken.
Haiku #10
Beaded dew drips from
The feather’s tip. Somewhere, a
Crow is missing it.
Haiku #11
A man on the shore
Sifts for presents left by the
Outgoing water.
Haiku #12
Morning mist slung from
Sloping pine shoulders trails damp
Footprints in the leaves below.
Haiku #13
Beaded dew drips from
The feather’s tip. From a wire,
A crow is watching.
Haiku #14
My shadow hunches
Around my ankle, pouting
Until it can stretch.
Haiku #15
My shadow hunches
Around my ankle until
It can stretch its limbs.
Haiku #16
Autumn’s handprints fall
On the trail ahead. My dog
Sniffs to find it.
Haiku #17
Trees shedding their leaves:
Thin paper pages of the
Story they just told.
Haiku #18
A hunkered tree waits,
Its gnarled arms offering
Imperfect shade.
Haiku #19
Fossil leaves lace the
Rock where I rest, listening
To wind rushing through trees.
Leaves
Winter pulls at its dim,
Chill coat and shudders,
Sloughing off Autumn’s
Threadbare mantel,
While Spring thuds a
Dull beat in its breast
Millennium Equations
Zero-sum games never make for good bedfellows, they tell
You to steal the sheets in the middle of the night because
Xenophobes that we are, we feel the need to
Wrest all available resources from the hands of
Vitamin B deficient masses who don’t know: that
Utopia’s a mask worn by a particular
Type of tyranny that slinks in under the threshold to
Sink its claws in under the couches of would-be
Rabble-rousers, knocking holes in their heads to let in visions of
Quixotic missions to mount die-ins and peace-marches-- while urban
Purgatories continue to fight and bleed, killing their
Orions but keeping every Oedipus-- and the kids in the
Nursery schools keep pill counters in backpacks, to pop back because
Mom over-medicates them, or has to work three jobs just to
Lay down dinner; and even when she does, her kith and
Kin can only come so far before the real world becomes
Jaundiced next to the bounty of the talking box; its
Imprint left black as hypertonic laugh-tracks wax
Hypnotic as we grind through our days, and our
Guts just keep hurting, hurting, so we keep
Feeding, feeding: eating down to the
Entrails of everything around us, to fill the
Deep trenches of our ribs and thigh bones; we
Count our calories like shekels in a
Bank filled to bursting, but we’d pay back every
Atom just to take a breath.
The Owl Outside My Window
His voice like wax paper on a comb:
three notes and a downward tone.
His refrain floats out in the night
like Sputnik’s far away chant.
He’s the first, as well.
Trills and lullabies bounce off branches,
echoing “Hello? Hello?”
His midnight alto buzz out over
the slough becomes a fugue:
across the pond his song has found
an antiphon to call his own.
Relics Erased
Between the cracked blacktop
And chain-link swings, beneath
The fossil skin of blackberries
Bent round, our secret house
Still hides, with its parched thorns
That pricked the shirts from our backs.
A bare depression, pleated
By rainwater fingers, leads
From my feet, up and beneath
The tower that creaks, its shifting
Vines part to let me peek:
No footprint patterns or cracked plastic toys, no
Absconded lawn chairs with rust-bled pores
Remain as sign-posts for passers-by, the
Dust ridged roots long since sealed
The small moments of our days back there,
Even as I crane my neck along the path.
Salmon
Springing from murk-wreathed pearls
In tucked-away cracks,
Fins flash amongst sun-spied reeds, and flow
Into quicksilver runs, scenting
Freedom in the open ocean.
Saltwater seasons carve a homeward path
Into the bone-deep structures of those wanderers
Who journey back, laying themselves bare,
A sacrifice, an open offering given
So that some may yet live to strive and die
On the rocks, and watch as
Tiny pink pearls filter back, into the cracks,
Settling into the hush until springtime.
Standing on a Sidewalk
The wind from passing cars
Whips strands of hair between
My eyelashes. But I stay sitting
In your basement,
My little finger
On your temple,
Your pulse lapping
Against my skin.
Why Is Snow?
Given the right atmospheric conditions
vapor collects round a single drop to freeze
into a solid-state crystalline structure.
Six molecules come together, kinked
like koi fish, to
join six more and
six more after that. This
lattice might bud
six branches, might become
a dendritic plate, a star, a needle, these
morphologies dependent on the way
the wind blows them.
Given all that, need we know more than is known about the habits and patterns of the snowflake?
If we said that the true effects
of temperature on structure
have gone unrecorded, if we said
that the border between liquid and crystal remains
uncharted, what of it?
What if no one had ever asked “why is snow?”
No cosmic ledger exists to disseminate the list of
Things We Don’t Know About Yet, and I
like my ignorance in little bread crumbs, leading
one by one into the dark.
Bird-chirps in the dark resurrect
Spring’s scent, which spreads
Its fingers through the chest,
Between the ribs, renewing grayed flesh
And flushing out winter’s musty breath.
Beneath the blankets,
My chest rising up and down,
I burrow further in.
Across the Lake
A cloud stretches out
And dips,
Resting its head
Against the mountain’s
Bristled shoulder.
Baltimore in the Springtime
The squirrels have gone feral, their
Fuzzy clockwork thoughts
Have warped, and with the froth
From their mouths they spackle
Grievances on the bricks near the park.
The house-finches have revolted, turning
Into pin-feather ruffians, their lacquer-eyes glinting while
With crooked claws they scratch and peck,
Scuffling for every last speck.
The oak stands stooping near the quad, its upturned palms
And crackled-bark fingers strain, but can’t quite reach
The muttering feet at its base.
The trolley car’s tracks, bleached
In moon-stripped monochrome, stretch out
Like prison bars, a
Key left hanging in the latch.
Cryptocrystalline Mollusca
I.
Of old, the phoenix was never
A feathered thing, but bubbled
Up from the rift and roil
Of a thousand crushing layers,
Once ashen-ridged, now
Unearthed, an ember.
II.
The first flame was spilled
By a clever clam, who burrowed
Beneath, while the earth
Was still soft. He dug
Between igneous ribs that
Burned, and emerged in blazing,
Spectral glory.
III.
What fantastic passion must lay behind
Those walls of scaled gray bone and muck, that click
And spit salt bile from underneath the sand.
What other reason might there be to prove
How, from the clam’s chitin hood an opal buds,
Than that a clam, possessed of beauty hides
Its truth and fury close to its cold heart,
Until, at death, it bleeds its fire forth,
And soaks its shell in gleaming greens and reds.
From the Park & Ride, Coming Home
Two red cranes, like
night watchmen, stand,
cables strung from
narrow necks. One left
half-turned toward
the other,
chatting.
Alone in a crowd of
stooping roofs,
they have to
pass the time
til sunrise
somehow.
Grandfather Spider
A grandfather spider sits creaking,
he raises a leg to shed
the dust that creeps
up from the drooping strands
of his front porch.
he looks along the lines
of his estate:
every snag in his web a cracked window, every leaf or seed
that lingers,
a rusted truck gathering grass.
He coughs under his whiskers and pulls
his hound’s tooth coat tighter
around his girth,
raindrops clinging to his feet
like cufflinks, glinting
as he waits for a visitor
to come a-calling.
Haiku #1
A breeze from the west
Flutters leaves on the new growth
To say “hello.”
Haiku #2
The first crocuses
Thread color through the soil; spring
Begins to whisper.
Haiku #3
Gardens in Winter:
Ice encircles the branches,
Green waits to open.
Haiku #4
Seagull in the sky:
First turns away from sunset,
Then flies back, searching.
Haiku #5
The sun ripens
But it still hurts to look there.
Finally, a cloud.
Haiku #6
Mountains in the west
Only peek out at sunset
To make the sky blush.
Haiku #7
Gulls skirt the clouds
As they wither and darken.
The sun is setting.
Haiku #8
Color in the sky
Fades to gray in the west.
The sun stole it.
Haiku #9
Eastern sky at dusk:
Blue deepens around the moon.
The clouds thicken.
Haiku #10
Beaded dew drips from
The feather’s tip. Somewhere, a
Crow is missing it.
Haiku #11
A man on the shore
Sifts for presents left by the
Outgoing water.
Haiku #12
Morning mist slung from
Sloping pine shoulders trails damp
Footprints in the leaves below.
Haiku #13
Beaded dew drips from
The feather’s tip. From a wire,
A crow is watching.
Haiku #14
My shadow hunches
Around my ankle, pouting
Until it can stretch.
Haiku #15
My shadow hunches
Around my ankle until
It can stretch its limbs.
Haiku #16
Autumn’s handprints fall
On the trail ahead. My dog
Sniffs to find it.
Haiku #17
Trees shedding their leaves:
Thin paper pages of the
Story they just told.
Haiku #18
A hunkered tree waits,
Its gnarled arms offering
Imperfect shade.
Haiku #19
Fossil leaves lace the
Rock where I rest, listening
To wind rushing through trees.
Leaves
Winter pulls at its dim,
Chill coat and shudders,
Sloughing off Autumn’s
Threadbare mantel,
While Spring thuds a
Dull beat in its breast
Millennium Equations
Zero-sum games never make for good bedfellows, they tell
You to steal the sheets in the middle of the night because
Xenophobes that we are, we feel the need to
Wrest all available resources from the hands of
Vitamin B deficient masses who don’t know: that
Utopia’s a mask worn by a particular
Type of tyranny that slinks in under the threshold to
Sink its claws in under the couches of would-be
Rabble-rousers, knocking holes in their heads to let in visions of
Quixotic missions to mount die-ins and peace-marches-- while urban
Purgatories continue to fight and bleed, killing their
Orions but keeping every Oedipus-- and the kids in the
Nursery schools keep pill counters in backpacks, to pop back because
Mom over-medicates them, or has to work three jobs just to
Lay down dinner; and even when she does, her kith and
Kin can only come so far before the real world becomes
Jaundiced next to the bounty of the talking box; its
Imprint left black as hypertonic laugh-tracks wax
Hypnotic as we grind through our days, and our
Guts just keep hurting, hurting, so we keep
Feeding, feeding: eating down to the
Entrails of everything around us, to fill the
Deep trenches of our ribs and thigh bones; we
Count our calories like shekels in a
Bank filled to bursting, but we’d pay back every
Atom just to take a breath.
The Owl Outside My Window
His voice like wax paper on a comb:
three notes and a downward tone.
His refrain floats out in the night
like Sputnik’s far away chant.
He’s the first, as well.
Trills and lullabies bounce off branches,
echoing “Hello? Hello?”
His midnight alto buzz out over
the slough becomes a fugue:
across the pond his song has found
an antiphon to call his own.
Relics Erased
Between the cracked blacktop
And chain-link swings, beneath
The fossil skin of blackberries
Bent round, our secret house
Still hides, with its parched thorns
That pricked the shirts from our backs.
A bare depression, pleated
By rainwater fingers, leads
From my feet, up and beneath
The tower that creaks, its shifting
Vines part to let me peek:
No footprint patterns or cracked plastic toys, no
Absconded lawn chairs with rust-bled pores
Remain as sign-posts for passers-by, the
Dust ridged roots long since sealed
The small moments of our days back there,
Even as I crane my neck along the path.
Salmon
Springing from murk-wreathed pearls
In tucked-away cracks,
Fins flash amongst sun-spied reeds, and flow
Into quicksilver runs, scenting
Freedom in the open ocean.
Saltwater seasons carve a homeward path
Into the bone-deep structures of those wanderers
Who journey back, laying themselves bare,
A sacrifice, an open offering given
So that some may yet live to strive and die
On the rocks, and watch as
Tiny pink pearls filter back, into the cracks,
Settling into the hush until springtime.
Standing on a Sidewalk
The wind from passing cars
Whips strands of hair between
My eyelashes. But I stay sitting
In your basement,
My little finger
On your temple,
Your pulse lapping
Against my skin.
Why Is Snow?
Given the right atmospheric conditions
vapor collects round a single drop to freeze
into a solid-state crystalline structure.
Six molecules come together, kinked
like koi fish, to
join six more and
six more after that. This
lattice might bud
six branches, might become
a dendritic plate, a star, a needle, these
morphologies dependent on the way
the wind blows them.
Given all that, need we know more than is known about the habits and patterns of the snowflake?
If we said that the true effects
of temperature on structure
have gone unrecorded, if we said
that the border between liquid and crystal remains
uncharted, what of it?
What if no one had ever asked “why is snow?”
No cosmic ledger exists to disseminate the list of
Things We Don’t Know About Yet, and I
like my ignorance in little bread crumbs, leading
one by one into the dark.
