Poem Published Today at Written Tales: STORM SURGE

 

Here's the link to the dramatic presentation at Written Tales: click here.

Storm Surge [published on Written Tales 5-30-23]

by Beth Kanell

 

First comes the wind, and then torrential rain—

there was no “eye” of peace, no silent space

but driven loss (one death) and pounding pain.

 

Why should I think I’d heal back, whole again

when half my hopes were his, his smile, his face,

gone with the roaring wind, the wrenching rain

 

and now these flooded fields that cannot drain.

My friend said, “Get a dog, expect new grace!”

But in her dark eyes, loss; trust pounds like pain.

 

He loved me as I am. That love’s a chain,

my anchor in this storm-soaked, battered place.

His life’s blown past like wind, like salted rain.

 

When healing comes, it’s tentative and plain,

a tender scar, a tentative new base—

as if a second life could lurch from pain!

 

Adopt the dog, and bonding close again

turns out to hold a storm surge that will race

and flood: Such wind may scream, such chilled rain:

This dog insists on love. Now comes more pain.

 

Where Poems Come From

A few weeks ago, I wrote a bluebird poem for an old friend. He makes bluebird houses. Also he makes poems. Later he asked me: "Did you just sit down and write that poem, just like that?"

"Nope," I answered. "It had been brewing for a few weeks."

For me, that's how it goes. One morning the last straw lands on the camel's back, or a spark catches on a shred of paper under a heap of sticks, and it's time to shut the visiting dog into her crate for a bit, so I can focus on the keyboard instead of delivering scratches, pats, and "good girl" crooning.

Today three poems erupted, after a long-ish dry spell (long for me, anyway). There's fourth one stuck in my chest, like a burp that refuses to escape. Well, maybe later.

At any rate, to reassure those of you who panic about when and where poems "come": I've had a self-assignment of topic for these, for about a month, with no lines crafted at all. Reading an essay this morning on how passages in the Torah are crafted, I found a Greek-rooted word that was new-ish to me: chiasm. By the time I'd looked up several aspects of it, I'd also found a poetry structure I wanted to try out, and realized that it's the word for the way our eyes and brain cross over information, inverting it into what we "see" in front of us.

Which led, at last,  to an opening I could step through, into a poem.

When I didn't care so much, it was easier to "toss off" a poem. Now, though ... it's a day's work, and more. Which, I admit, is how I like it.

 

Optic cabling -- a graphic by Ratznium. [Ratznium at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons]