June 3, 2008
April 14, 2008
Branch Brook Park trees
First, a principal of attention, simply that, A faith that if we look and look we will be surprised and we will be rewarded.
Mark Doty in “Still Life with Oysters and Lemons”
out and traveling
in blue fog at an hour
for those with insomnia
or dogs with needs
i am here. tangerine suns
of street lights show silver
on grass, teardrops at tips
of branches, first words
of morning. between friends
about friends, not praise but
prayers of petition, promises,
wishful thinking that spirit
wants spirit in these faithful
tributes we make before
another day. i look up, see
scraggly heads of trees, roots
trying to
anchor
the lifting
sky
January 12, 2008
November 25, 2007
Gobnait’s Well (or not so)
A day fourteen centuries ago shortly before the sun appears
full and steady in Ballyvourney, Gobnait passes the well
eager for the buzz of market day, the trading of gossip
like any commodity, the adornments of detail will
be added to humble stories of humbler lives, beads
of sweat from an uncommonly warm day
setting off complaints in a litany
even the abbey priest would find tiring
the weather, the wares, the worries
There is no agreement of woes, except the bees:
Who will save us? Moses, the great Patrick who sent serpents
to the sea? We cannot find our way from misery.
A lot they expect from their petitions, Gobnait sighs
as she cools herself under the tree the bears her name,
they had better want what they pray for.
And they received the relief for which heaven had been stormed
but without the bees, earth turned the brown of powder,
bushes had thorns, but no blooms.
‘Tis these miracles that burden us so; this land could do
with fewer kinds, poets and saints.” With some fear
holy Gobnait takes her leave to the beehive huts
further west and down the coast to Dunquinn.
Still they call that well in Cork Tobar Ghobnait
and for every traveler who passes this way
the story gets told as it is remembered.
