cat in the orchard in the fog

Let me see if I can translate the hints about the cat stalking through the barren orchard in the fog of an early morning drive…
I am talking about the production of poetry, and there have been a lot of posts on our respective blogs recently that try to tackle this issue, or aspects of it. Truth is, I was coming home early, not alone in the car, from some place that I should not have been. There was small talk going on between the four of us. I was sitting in the back, playfully rubbing the shoulders of the woman in the passenger seat in front of me. Everyone was quiet in the early morning cold but me. I couldn’t stop talking, joking, singing to myself and trying to break up the strange dynamic. I mention the incident of driving home in the car in the early morning fog because it was the apex of an arc that my life has been taking recently. And I mention the cat in the orchard, because, as I was rubbing the shoulders of the woman in front of me, I turned to my right in mid sentence as the car passed an empty space and then a small orchard. There were no leaves left, and the fog hung on the ground like mustard gas. The only thing remarkable about the orchard was a small white cat that moved without playing between the trees with cautious steps, as if hunting.
I stopped when I saw the cat, realizing the complete image I had just seen through the fog. I took my hands off the shoulders of the woman in front of me and was quiet the rest of the way home.
That cat, that orchard, and that fog, will one day find themselves expressed as images in one of my better poems. A poem must grow out of this. There was something in the morning, and the night before, and the actions of last week, and the conversations from months ago, that led me to a realization about many things. There was something about myself that congealed in the image of a cat in an orchard in the fog. I wont write about the cat for some time, until I can resist the urge to try and set up parallels between the image and my situation, but I know that image now with such an intensity, that I can wield it as a poet and make it something far more beautiful. I think this is what Leslie Norris is talking about when he says you must wait for the poems to come. I have my scheduled times to write, and I need not wait for a stroke of inspiration to drive me to the keyboard, but unless I have stored up these experience-images, then I will write weak and forgetful things. I have waited for the image of the cat in the fog for a long time now, and am still waiting for other experiences to congeal into other images. And some I have stored in my mind that are ripening for use. A poet must live his/her craft in an intimate way, and though removed from their first connotations, the images a poet uses must remain as intimate as my cat in fog. There is a sincerity to such things, which any reader will understand. This is what Whitman was referring to when he said “I wish I could translate the hints of the young men…” There was no removal between Whitman and his images, and the sprawling song of myself shows only the surface of Whitman’s powerful images, but the sincerity of his earnest wish is clear.
I will one day translate the hints of the cat in the fog, and the images before that, and the images that will come after. Our power as poets will always lay in how vivacious we live, and how observant we are to the immense images within and around us. My contract with the reader is merely to be fertile soil, and when I harvest with my poems to be sincere to the images and express them as beautifully as possible. I require no understanding, and demand no vindication. The better I am at being fertile soil, the better I become at translating the hints of it.
All for now--

new work

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to blogging, but i have been busy answering the loads and loads of comments i have recieved. I think i have finally gotten through most of them, and so now am free to post some new stuff. This is a piece i think April worked on, that i have since upgraded and expanded, though it is still not done. I think there is a lot of fertile ground in and around the concept of "knowing what you know and keeping it mostly to yourself". I dont know just how much that betrays the poets contract with the reader...and if it does maybe its time for a renegotiation of that contract...

anyway, like that makes any sense :)

Flowers for Gabriela

I forget if it was tulips or roses
we threw on Victor’s sinking coffin.
I like to remember it as spring:
Great handfuls of pastel tulips.

I remember a plane ride,
coming home alone,
thinking all the time of our tenements,
stacked side to side, high and human.
Deep green and orange honeysuckle vines
along and between the buildings,
sucking out their sweetness from the bitter red brick. .

Your Great Grandfather beat his pregnant wife.
He hoped, if she just bled enough,
he could excuse himself from the revolution.
She did not bleed for long, nor did her child.
When he went off to fight,
she eased the three-headed pain inside with a tea
brewed from lemon and Hibiscus petals.

Before a high school dance
my small blonde date-slight shouldered wisconsin girl-
pinned a Carnation to my lapel.
Her hand trembled all the way
and fumbling, pricked herself on the pin.
Looking at me below my eyes,
she left her pale hand on my chest,
still trembling.

Your Great Grandfather died at Torreon,
going down under his horse after the first volley.
When the dust and hooves had past,
all quiet in his heart,
open eyes staring on a patch of nearby daisies:
(he thought last of his wife and child, like daisies)
white petals, yellow center,
roots that grew strong and deep and red.

When we saw Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
lilting in their vase like forgotten royalty,
we suddenly left that place.
In central park we stretched ourselves
it seemed, to the heatless winter sun
and lying, said nothing for a very long time.

Casablanca Lilies, heavy headed in the vase
pull on their stems and quickly bow.
The burden of their fragrant heads always too much
for a sudden lack of roots.
My mother used to say,
if I pulled the pollen off their pistils
they would live longer.
I could never bring myself to do it.

When your mother threaded orange blossoms
in your hair, her hand also trembled.
You didn’t notice, you were a child,
and refused to come in at dusk when she called.
She told me once,
walking through the orchard
And looking at the pebbled, fallen fruit
that she mourned you even then.