LEMNISCATES

This past May, my poetry won its first awards. The news came in three e-mails that felt like beams of light during the dreary 2014 winter of illness in our home. First I heard of an honorary mention, then a third place, then a first in the North Carolina Poetry Society Annual Contests. People asked where they could read the poems, but I had to wait to share them until they were published in Pinesong, Awards 2015, the annual anthology from the NCPS. Here is the first prize winner in the Thomas H. McDill Award, Lemniscates. The title is a fancy name for the eternity symbol. The poem is about apocalypse on both an individual and collective level: the beauty that comes when old patterns break apart. My journal art from 1979 seems to fit.

Lemniscates                                         

“In my beginning is my end” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

*

At dawn, a mule deer and her fawn graze on fallen apples; the doe senses my watching. Eyes meet and hold, then her long neck bends again to fruit.

My boot rakes rain-soaked mint growing wild by the kitchen door. Scent rises, tinged with forgiveness.

In ancient Peche-Merle caves, hand prints in red ochre and cinder dance on scorched walls. Underground pools congeal and rise, soak crevice to ceiling with bright algae.

                                                         

Soft now, a dream.

*

Shrill cries: a legion of eagles passes overhead, blocks the sun. Grey feathers float towards earth.

Everywhere, houses begin to shake and sing with voices of the dead; dishes tumble from hutch shelves. Smash. In Africa they say of breakage: spirit has been set free. 

  Beavers dance beneath a pink moon. Smack mud with flat tails.

                       

*

In the metropolis, sulfurous hell-bubbles explode. Blue arctic wind clears the stink; butterfly bushes burst the concrete, flutter with lapis, gold, orange.          

                                                                       

The jelly-roll land writhes: a glittering emerald serpent, a belly dancer’s sequined girdle. Fearless, children ride its waves, shouting, till nightfall.

Sun returns, a kindergarten drawing, benevolent, cheeks turnip-round. Its lemon rays warm all. No more you, me, them.

*

Rubble becomes art,

how we live. A kind of thick bread

fragrant with herbs.

(copyright Cathy Larson Sky 2015, first printed in Pinesong Awards 2015.)

                

THE DOLL CHAIR

People seldom sat in her,

The Doll Chair

She lived by the hearth,

Facing outward,

She partnered the television

Two sibling watchers,

One on squat claw feet,

The other a grey orb

Observing the Living Room

At my grandparents’ house,

With its worn Regency grandeur

Its well-trod carpets

And fragrances delicious and kind,

Waved inside by the swinging kitchen door.

On Christmas morning

The doll I wanted,

Had longed for

All those other seasons

Appeared in the Doll Chair,

Its small arms extended,

Next to my sister’s choice,

And our two Christmas stockings

Bulging with treats.

That was the miracle of having.

But before came the miracle of waiting.

Christmas eve,

On the foldout in Pop Pop’s study

Sister and I lay bug-eyed

While headlights from our cars

And the neighbors’ cars

Lit the darkness behind white nylon curtains

Made dancing panels on the high ceiling

And whispers came and went

Muted fluttering from the other

Regions of the limitless house.

In the mysterious night

I lie sleepless, alive to every sound.

My sister’s quiet breath beside me

I can’t wait but I do

Knowing that my wish is going to come true

That magic is about to happen

I am present to the velvet darkness

In an ever-new, ever changing way.

And it seems to me now

That my child mind believed less in Santa

Than in my ability to make appear,

By my dreaming and my desiring,

The most cherished of earthly things.

The Doll Chair a portal

For the bright, the new, the shining.

She is mother love

She is the full-petaled rose of possibility

Of gifting, of renewal.

On a New Year’s morning she reminds me of what is gone

And the possibility of what yet might be

Unseen now

But roiling in my heart to appear

Tiny flashes of clarity in the sleepless night

Reassurance of what may come

What may yet come.

copyright cathylarsonsky jan 2011

WHEN LIFE IS HARSH,

I want Christmas/I want the red and green, color of blood, color of pine.
I want silver haired ladies in Frosty the Snowman, skating scene sweaters.
I want mulled spiced wine and cheese balls, presents stacked in a crazy pile;
I want elves, piquant and bell-capped, or round and apple-bellied, and
Angels -- ornate Victorians or home mades of clothespins and cotton balls.
I want the lift in my heart when I see, turning up the drive, the tree lights beckon from the window.

I want the feeling of Benny’s Hardware/new tire smell wafting from the bicycle rack/cello-gleam of dolly packages, housing bunting babies, or nymphs with curly poly-thread wigs/pink or swimming-pool blue ponies with shimmering manes and tails.

I want my arms around a wriggling, impatient toddler, dressed in snap-up peejays, her breath sweet upon my neck as I carry her on my hip to the sink, where I wipe sticky candy mess from pudgy soft fingers, the chocolate of foiled Santas from her tender mouth, from her cheeks flushed crimson from sugar, and waiting, and not having to wait any more and

Christmas early morning
Christmas lustrous night
Christmas, her shining bobbing orbs and winking lights
Tracing the snowy yard
Breathing up into a lapis sky
Where a scattering of tiny rhinestones,
The wake of angels’ wings,
Blink joy in the cold stillness.

Copyright Cathy Larson Sky 11/17/2009