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POEMS BY
MARY RAE
NIGHTFALL
The lovely night is in the quiet hour,
draping sheerest sapphire over light,
coaxing trees and meadows to unite
and flow as one great earth beneath one power
of gentleness. No single grass or flower
escapes the kind persuasion to delight
by softening the harsh effects of sight,
to make of life one seamless, sinking bower.
What a small surrender to dissolve
into the dark's deep forgetfulness,
leaving troubles to a vanished sun.
Yet, the hours will move and earth revolve
and rest and slumbering peace will be undone
as we awaken to morning's fitfulness.
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SUNLIGHT
Sunlight fits around each lovely shape,
molding grass to tree and branch to air,
unfolding its translucence like a cape
billowing beneath bright golden hair.
Each polished leaf exactly corresponds
to a crescent cutout made of sun.
Together they form fluid, drifting bonds
dissolving each into a sense of one.
Gleaming, radiant, brilliant, bright and glowing,
golden, flaxen, fair, yellow and shining:
The world is this for sunlight without knowing,
and without hoping, planning, loving or pining.
We drop, too human, beneath such mindless light,
and think and think and think into the night.
(first published in Ship of Fools)
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CARUSO
I've heard it said your voice was great because
it's rare for notes so sweet to have an edge,
and that listening to your high notes was
like the thrill of standing on a ledge
where one false step would mean a spiral fall
past blurring windows lit to catch the eyes,
past fragrant trees whose branches seemed to call,
past the garden wall in slow surprise
where time would deepen and grow wide,
past crocuses whose tender shoots would brush
against red cheeks, before the final slide
to earth: And, as if that weren't enough,
no one listening could ever know
if you were holding on, or letting go.
(first published in Hellas)
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SEER
I dreamed you were a murderer
and all the summer air
could not unblacken what you were
or make the body fair;
for what you killed was love itself,
its light and aching breath,
and though the limbs with studied grace
still moved, the dance was death.
(first published in Plains Poetry Journal)
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GIANTS
It is, some say, a wasteful shame to live
among the giants, dead as they are tall,
to pour bright dreams into a silver sieve
and watch them turn to powder as they fall.
How tiring to always think of up,
and strain to suck a thin and deadly air.
How sad, inviting Mr. Keats to sup,
and have him act as if you were not there.
Still, colossal minds will not erase,
their wakeful eyes tracing graceful lines
of jewelled planets spun in endless space
according to inevitable design.
And I, for one, think it far less sweet
to triumph small than fail at giants' feet.
(first published in Sparrow)
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Comments? E-mail Mary Rae below
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