Bucks County Writers Workshop

The Poetry Page

No. 2

edited by Kurt Krumpholz

What is it that draws us to poetry?

Is it that poetic imagination defies the tyranny of rules or oppression by any one single idea? After all, writing poetry can be a liberating experience for the fiction writer bridled by the commandments and restrictions of prose.

Or is it because poetry affords us the most candid means for the telling of our soul's stories? More so than perhaps even the short story, poetry permits us a peak behind the curtain, a direct glimpse into the heart of the moment. Each poem allows us to know what it was like to be here, what it was like at a particular time for a particular person to pass across this landscape, and to discern more than just the footsteps that person left behind, but instead, gain a chance to gaze through their eyes at exactly what they saw along the way.

Poetry is immediate. Poetry is enduring. Poetry can let us know what it's like to be alive, and to inhabit the moment in someone else's skin. A good poem can be like the shock of seeing a three thousand year old fly caught in amber. It can take what is fleeting and evanescent, at best, and render it transcendent.

The selections of this Poetry Page edition are all good examples of how being attentive to the details of each opening in time can help us to see beyond the abstractions of the moment.

Remember to stop by the workshop with your entry form to see if you've won this month's cap snaffler. Email me at:

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Here is a mystical description of what happened to one writer alone at his desk one summer night. The immediacy of the experience is delivered through use of present tense.

Shadows

Al Honig

As I sit at my desk In the dark, I look out The open window into The summer's night, and Feel that I am not alone. A beam of full moonlight Enters my fingernails, and Provides the power for My hand to write. It casts a shadow, a clone that Moves as that hand moves. I fidget and tremble, flog The gentle wind. I sweat, Breathe heavy, wrestle its Middle, pin it in a headlock. Cut through its bone, bleed Its arteries, but it is only I That feels its pain. I look out the window; watch, As the shadow rides a message Beam to the moon above. I stand near the window and see Five black claws tickle my toes. I pace the room. The shadow With bent back follows my wake. Does it have a brain In its oblong head? Does it long for love? The moon is motherly and so must care. The sun watches over the beam of light. Together, they birth this ghostly vision. I try to bear it as a chum We walk together fused by our feet. My cavities are timid, scared, and skittish. I stamp the ground, run up a hill, Jump over a fence, spit at its face. It spits back. I squeeze its chest, it Hugs my waist. My dog paws his in play. Watching all this, my belly sooths I think this ugly apparition Must be a friend. Wearied, I doze free from strife. As will a baby sleep The song of its mother's Shadow.

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Not every remembrance feeds on perceptions of a moment past. Time, in the linear sense, is not always relevant.

One, Long Ago, When We Lived in the Sky

Linda Banks

Once, long ago, When we lived in the sky, And the thin, ragged clouds were high In the brightness, And the coldtime wind was beginning to blow, Mother, she called to us with her beautiful cry, Clear and sharp. She would come and give from her mouth As we raised our heads, Food, life, wonderful, That she carried for us safe inside herself, And warm in the cold air. And then warm in the warm round place She had made, Part from what she had found In the wide world, And part from her own body, We could, at last, close our eyes.

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Often a single, concise image can transform the fugitive moment into one that liberates us from the burden of the present.

Brittle

Kurt Krumpholz

February creaks like ice underfoot as I open the blinds on a new day and coax Max out of bed. Together we sit before the window in a beam of light that slants in through the glass. His head turned sideways and resting on my chest, twitches slightly as the kite tail of a dream slips off into the morning blush. Below, birdsong rises from the garden feeder, filled just yesterday but swaying lightly now as a Jay skirts off to a stand of alders, their black limbs branching like millstreams across the snow-white plane. How strange to be aware of the nucleus that lies nested in my arms and feel all that arcs between us; the root of a man that rests beneath the blackness of a boy's sleep and the recognition I will be the last shelter he knows until he someday comes to question everything, including the very source of love. For now, at least, all is given, sure as water and darkness and then the lightness of opening to the world once again. Suspended here in this moment of our life together, I wonder who will someday press this man's cheek close to their skin and who will succor him in the cold light of a far off day, once his solitary birthright has been assured?

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Perhaps eternity is the time between the instant a moment is recorded, and the flash of recognition that illuminates its significance.

For Harold

Shelly Quigley

Harold, what happened, what happened to you? One day you were here Next day you were gone The first time I saw you, you seemed rather frail Your pallor was green like the walls of a jail You walked and you stuttered and sometimes you'd groan But mostly you wandered the grounds all alone You'd been in the hospital since you were eight A lifetime you spent as a ward of the state You always remained when the others would leave You sat with the nursing staff on Christmas Eve The hospital closed and you had not a clue You never got warnings or notice to you The place you called home, your hospital ward Was locked and front door secured with a board Harold, what happened, what happened to you? One day were here Next day you were gone They put your possessions in one small trash bag And gave you a jacket that looked like a rag They found you a room in the slums of the town No curtains were hung on the windows so brown To care for your needs you received compensation The boarding homeowner used that for vacation You seemed to grow thinner and lost all your hair You rarely went out and just sat in a chair Then one gloomy day you were not seen around The groaning had stopped, you made not a sound We asked what was wrong, but the questions were late Some said it was cruelty and some said just fate Harold, what happened, what happened to you? One day you were here Next day you were gone.

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The intensity of perception can freeze an instant, rendering the purity of the moment almost tangible.

Death

John Scioli

Shaving cream pie in the face: Eyes blind, nose numb, A bitter taste upon the tongue A white fluff of ambivalent play A muted sack of laughs heard By a confused and giddy mind Coming to term with Tantrum and tears, Laughing while Unstopping senses, Joining the chorus Of good will angels The other side of the pie And in the after hit A fragrance sweet In hair and nose Upon the clothes All over the face A transfigured place.

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Back Issues of the Poetry Page

Issue No. 1

Bucks County Writers Workshop