Poetry

All posts tagged Poetry

Long Season of Waiting

Published June 28, 2012 by rlmcdermott

I wonder why
for some of us
life is like a long
season of waiting.

Does the cone flower
know the brevity
of its dance;
its one brown
eye blasted daily
by the sun–
can it see
anything
but the sky?

I’m a flower too
and my season
has been long.
For me, there
is no fall
in this place
just an endless
summer of grief.

I am unnatural,
a seed lifted
by the breeze
and carried here–
distant from the prairie,
distant from the tall grasses,
distant from the meadow lark,
and distant from that softer
season when the earth
puts on its gray hat
and takes its flowers home.

To My Father (Poem by me, Drawing by my sister Patricia)

Published June 12, 2012 by rlmcdermott

What a spring that was
the season that I spent
in the hollow of your bone.
Sweet amputee, how
do I forget those sleeping
days and the sour sweat
of death against the shining
bandage of your smile.

We counted flesh like coins
that dropped from our hands
half spent–so little did you
bleed, so quite was your death.
Sweet amputee, how do I
forget those sleeping days
and the intensity of eyes
that never left my face
except to die unchallenged
while I slept.

Kyoto Botanical Garden

Published June 1, 2012 by rlmcdermott

What kind of trees
were they that
broke the color–

all tall and green
and dancing
in the slow sunlight
of an April afternoon?

Women in blue
kimonos stood
beneath the
delicate branches
snapping pictures
digital and bright.

Children played,
young mother’s
strolled, stooped
old men finished
with their lives
sat on stone benches.

An artist crouched
in a flower bed
like a wounded animal;
linen canvas stained
with a furious red.

I had come here to meet a
god and found instead a man.

We are not seen by the people we love,
but are loved by the people who see us.

That afternoon,
five thousand miles
from my home,
someone saw me
and asked where
I was from in
perfect English.

Beautiful Vampire

Published May 23, 2012 by rlmcdermott

How many years
have I waited
in this place–

no shadow
sheltering me,

no song
giving comfort,

only memory
holding me
in its closed hand?

Then one day
I asked a question,
threw it in the air

and there you were–
a creature, different
yet the same,

tortured by a demon
that has so many names
it thinks that it’s a god.

And so for you;

I’ll wait beneath
these paper trees
for all the sunsets left to me–
I’ll be the water in the fire,
the blackened stone,
the insect at the end of day
all leg and tender bone.

Unrequited

Published May 9, 2012 by rlmcdermott

there must be
more than death

we sleep eyes
opening only
to see each
other’s face

sweet face
a mouth
I’ve never kissed
I wonder if your
lips are warm

I cannot move
to put you
in your place
somewhere
beneath my heart

am I alive
to love so silently

they move me
side to side
and call my name
and I am lonely
in this crib of pain

between the bars
I see your eyes
and remember
when I was young
I knew a god

Homecoming

Published May 9, 2012 by rlmcdermott

I walked invisible

among the trees.

I listened to their

flowers weep;

a sound much

like my failing

heart–all white

and filled with grief.

 

You never came,

no word,

if words were possible;

so I turned back

and climbed the

lonely road to

a place where

gods were waiting.

 

I held them off

the silver moon,

the starless sky,

the scent of jasmine

and found my fate

inside myself;

a darker plain

than most

but home to

all I love—

paper trees,

a sanguine sky,

a city by the

water’s edge.

 

 

 

Moonlight Sonata

Published April 25, 2012 by rlmcdermott

and so this wintering
is a chilling by degrees
the sting of loss
slowly frosting all I love
or all that might
have ever loved me

where are those
easy days of light
the long walks
beside a blue lake
the yellow coneflowers
the sun’s burning kiss

now I am all shadow
and sadness
at this slow goodbye
this fading into gray
that has become my life

you could have loved me
but you were too afraid
mistaking all this death
for who I am

while all this time
I was in the color
undamaged and intact
ablaze with life
and its sweet repititions

On Interpretation

Published March 28, 2012 by rlmcdermott

I’ve always been a person who struggled with meaning.  Not the “meaning” of my life but what something means.  From  the time I was a kid I’ve always had to listen real hard to what people were saying–did they mean me when they said that, is there a message there for me, have I done something wrong?  It’s like I speak a different language than the rest of the world and have to filter everything through a lens that is deeply clouded.  Perhaps that is why I love music and poetry and art so much.  I don’t need to understand; I only need to feel!   As an artist, I think of my work in specific ways–drawing, mixed-media, experimental, narrative, landscape, colorful, however, because of my  own confusion about “meaning”  I don’t expect anyone to share my viewpoint about my work.  When I approach a painting, or a poem, or a song; I bring myself and all the history that life has burdened me with as audience.  If you truly want to be creative then you can’t put fences around your work.  The work must be free but you have to understand that a viewer, a listener will find in your work what they need, not what you need.  I invite people to tell me what they see in my drawings.  Sometimes it is very intimidating!   Recently a friend asked me “When did you move from the rain into the sunshine?”  I was stunned!  Did she see that in my drawings, did she see that in me, or was she telling me about herself?  No work of art is entirely removed from the artist but the artist, certainly, cannot prevent the audience from finding meanings that are necessary to them.  Good art will always transcend the artist because it allows for interpretation.  You can’t tell the world that you want your art to be “free” and then get angry because someone called your drawing  “a painting”,  your poem “a song” or your song “a poem.”  My life has taught me that meaning is at best elusive.  I have survived because I’ve always understood that every work of art, that every poem, that every song is there to comfort me in this hard thing called life.  What artist could ask for more?

Still Life

Published March 14, 2012 by rlmcdermott

She loved the

moon light in

the moonlight,

the ceaseless

murmuring of

her own leaves,

the hard wood

of her hardwood,

and, yes, the

dark forest.

 

She loved the

shadow in

the shadows,

witness and

companion,

sentinel to

her sadness,

rooted in

the moonlight,

rooted in

the trees.