Against Life’s Bent, a Moment

In the strictest branches
and the boughs that pierce with sun–
drenched tangs, lonely halting
nuthatch and its mating quicken.
Is a-cracking is her lance,
terrifying is chance
that tells the arc’s division,
when untold breath escapes, like
tottering at the weave, the loom.
Hat-pecking strings so griddle
even weeping wound.
It is even broader nap inducing
plastered protection,
as absconding wounded-bird inflection.
Then a firming far away
re-echoes pick-falls parting tables,
sensuous laughing flocks
of starting felldoms, purpling
callers. Then simple starling scripts,
dropping little stripling snips,
oh no not dangerous at all.
Wouldn’t it chuck along the wall?
Wouldn’t it append a patch of golden geese?
Wouldn’t it ride, set the seam, charm release
nigh and augur clear? Scry after?
And this apprised blue shoring;
and these rippled reticulating laggards
swooped in the stillness bell;
and the nays are bright and smooth;
and observer took to a framing,
and it blew out of the picture;
and it is temple-thrill tingling
sharply against gauntlet’s velvety life, bent.…

The aroma of salt-crusted roses,
of mother-of-pearl, of adventure,
shared its romance
unwillingly
with
one who is
no part of it.

YOU KNOW THEM AS WELL AS I DO

I never was a woman who could
fling a hank of lustrous hair over her right
shoulder to punctuate declarative
sentences, or one who appears fragile
and small when crying.

Those glossy women have the edge
in life, while the rest of us struggle
against the odds, groping for words
to fling, words that seldom have the
texture of silk or the immediacy of a
gracefully executed feminine gesture.

And when we cry
oh, when we cry, our bodies grow
steel-like and huge, our blotched faces
contort, and our discordant sobs
reverberate even unto three generations.

– by Ann Applegarth

Copyright ©2010 by Ann Applegarth. All Rights Reserved.…

Flower Poetry

When the flowers first escaped the row,
having scattered their generatives in time with a good wind,
I used poison to contain them. 
All gardeners know you can only own beautiful things
if you keep them in a square.

These were hearty poison-eating flowers, I discovered.
Soon, they made the grounds, even rooting in the concrete walk.
Hurrah for wildness, hurray for its life, I thought,
leaving them be.

I remember too clearly the morning I witnessed
the first flower to get inside the house.
It was growing from the kitchen floor.
I contained this pretty creature by setting a large soup-pot over it.
By next afternoon, the flower had called a compatriot,
and the pot had been overturned.

There was little time before their assault occurred.
Past the ramparts of my porch and windows,
the flowers crept in, each making a delicious scent,
sweetness in the walls, emanating from the fixtures,
flowers curling into the breadbox, out of the soot-flecked oven—
Last night, I heard them trying the bedroom door.…

Community Still

What can the Lords of Everything
about dull eccentricity complain?
A fine shill, which is to see kirtle
cock-eyed and expect its rounding up,
would cheer, would meet the sun.
And then at sacred hoops the banners
stream, and yet no historian
writes with finish the broken
horizon, and these Prodigals replay
their Herculean task unnoticed,
while grownups pass and joggle,
sniff and blow and jo, and shuffle, prattling feet.
Witness, at cost, the skipping girl:
She finds in a book honors
of wet cheeks and high ploys to relief
in bouncing from flue to pratfall; silvers
schooldays yet in stern lessons, polymath craze.
Or coal-boy, rougher than the dirty feathers
of his temperatures, dreams a leaf
and glimmers churlish in the post-tomtom clear.
That even nothing canters tail-flare
let the shorter race befall, and busy logs
go dancing with their dogs,
and frowning cats, the gentle rats — Dear Blood
it’s genius-wondered is homely bog.…

You can’t say it that way any more. / Bothered about beauty you have to/Come out into the open, into the clearing,/ And rest.  Certainly whatever funny happens to you/ Is OK

– And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name,  John Ashbery

The greatest problem in the arts today is the title; this tag that tells us what something is about: Battle of…,  Portrait of….,  Bowl of… Of course this gives even the most humble subject a coat of arms, presto a seigniorial dwelling, white picket fence and garden, all the dignity it deserves and Sunday painters so admire. But is this good? This, I would argue, has infected poetics, this aboutness, this supernatural force like it can’t be escaped. It’s the tongue lolling like a lazy sunflower tropistic by default.  But now I’m bored with this riff and need to take off in another direction which reminds me that most people can read maps,  understand the conventions.…

My Lord, what a morning,
My Lord, what a morning,
O my Lord, what a morning
When the stars begin to fall.
–Entrance hymn,
(Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine,
Second Sunday after Epiphany,
January 15, 2006)

After seven years of inter–
stellar wanderings, the spacecraft
that journeyed halfway to Jupiter,
beyond the Earth-Moon Orbit,
came back today.
It bears precious freight—
ageless dust motes, the most
primitive particles in the universe,
gathered from the outer limits—
from the time when there was no time,
when there was universe inchoate—
undifferentiated matter—the becoming thing
that was always there.

It brings nameless particles that existed
eons before our solar system was formed,
before there was water,
before there was earth.  Timeless,
they were there when life was
but a thought in the mind of God.

As the craft approaches atmosphere
crowds gather at the Dougway Proving
Ground in the Utah desert,
their pupils reflecting its red–
orange glow in the pre-dawn sky.…

Alexander Calder, 20^th century neglected master, said a piece is finished when the dinner bell rings. Clearly he knew truth was ass-backward. Beethoven’s Ninth is pretty good backward too; maybe better. Poor guy, a captive of his times, pressured by the Imperial Court. He had to code his message but he should have outfaced the constabulary and started with the hosannas and cheering and work back thru the darker parts, slogging thru piles of hubris. It’s clear it’s music about a type of joy that’s temporary. Myself, I always bear this in mind. Anyway it’s finished when it’s finished, when it’s as good read backward as forward. Some agree saying put Molly Bloom at the beginning. Others disagree. They say, when looking at Pollock or Gorky you must always start in the upper right hand corner. And there’s Beatrice in a short skirt.…