Poem

Troupe Portrait with Unicycle.

by Amy D. Unsworth

One tent, one ring

and the ponies trudging their sad circles,

the bags of peanuts shrunken

to fit a child’s hand.

But the spangled girls still ascend

to the lofted ceiling,

to dangle by heel or tooth.

And to the father’s broad shoulders

the sons catapult.

And Daughter steps

from her high platform, like off the curb

in her everyday boredom.

From: Tar River Poetry, Spring 2007

Draft: Insistent, The Rain

Insistent, the Rain.


Now:         a time for rain,         for roots.

The cedars lose their powdery-greyness

        for green,

a process

        imperceptible

from day to day.

        Until comes a morning

and the jay and wren, framed in

        wet window-panes,

perch in fluffed garments

on bright,
        drenched and dripping,
            limbs.

Draft: Words Together Dreaming

Words Together Dreaming

(draft by Amy D. Unsworth)

Jacinte: French back

To Greek & Hyacinthus—

too pleasing, too adored

by the gods—Jealousy incites

murder, blood to bloom:

An iris, a Hyacinth.

Racinate: de-racinate through French

back to Latin. Sans “de”—

uprooted turns to rooting.

Blood seeps through soil

reaching for Lethe—oblivion—

yet forced back to light

each spring the bursting forth

and swift decay— ardor a mere season—

and eternity the long hours of desolation

in the concealed bud hidden above Hades

rooting, rooted, and remembering.

________________________________

Winter: The Recidivist

First, acknowledge that it is--technically-- still Winter's domain.
Second, be grateful that the seedlings sprout in the windowsill.
Third, accept that precipitation blesses farms and ranches.
Fourth, realize that water tables rise when snow & ice falls.
Fifth, recognize one's fortune in warm shelter and supplies.
Sixth, examine hail and snowflakes in their transience.
Seventh, stir soup, knead bread and serve to rosy-nosed children.

Even under snow, the minute urge towards green.
Robins in great flocks rest in the bare limbed trees.
A pelican floats on the river. A heron rises.
A pair of bluebirds dally around a nesting box.
And overhead the geese, in mixed flights
of Canadas and Snows, wing with the wind
now Northwards. Patience.

In the crown of a splintered cottonwood
a pair of young hawks, bane to the field mice,
balances between the seasons.

A Heart at Half Mast

During the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time in thought grappling with the ideas of need.
The news everyday is depressing, homes lost to foreclosure, more people losing their grip and taking their lives and the lives of others, more poverty, more hunger, more environmental problems. My God, what are we doing to each other? And to this world we must live in?

I used to think that poetry *shouldn't* be political; it to quite a long time to realize how even that stance is (in fact) a political one, albeit, choosing to live with blinders in the lala land of art, rather than to take a good look around and to accept responsibility for my part, my actions, or more accurately: my lack of action. I dance with this issue, I really do: is it right for me to be sitting at my computer writing when there is always work that needs to be done? There are people that need food, not just a poem, even though I still want to hope that poems can make a difference:

***
Envelop
by Amy Unsworth

Given time and distance, both between us,
how can I give what I should give:
bread, warm from the oven, crisp crust,
butter dripping with each bite? Tea and honey,
lemon for tartness, to temper the little sorrows,
the sweet to soothe, for the warmth against our palms,
the leaves swirled in the patterned cups predicting
a tomorrow we could live with and through.
But here, an envelope, lined paper, inked with words
that perhaps you can read as hope, perhaps one
as strength, and one--with time--as joy.

***

Long ago, I imagined poetry as a way of making human connection. And I think that the lack human connection is the essential problem still, and I believe that art has its place and role in making life worth living. And beauty too, essential.

But people are dying of loneliness, from lack of hope, from the lack of a neighbor who even checks to see if they are ok. (a news story a few weeks ago: a toddler starved to death in his own apartment, because his mother died and NO ONE knew, or worried about them, or cared enough to check on them.)

Because we look away, when we don't like what we see, when it makes us UN-comfortable, when it makes us feel selfish, because we don't want to feel bad. (They are eating dirt mixed with lard in the Haitian slums.)

Too bad for them, we say. Bad choices on their part, we say. They should have thought about that before they (fill in the blank) (had a baby, rented that bigger house, bought a car). It makes it easier for us to look the other way. (RJ touched on this over at Scoplaw recently)
But, it's really: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

A friend sent me to check out a web site (wishuponahero.com). People ask for socks for their kids. For help this month with this and that. But the reoccurring note that continues to surprise me: it's not the stuff (money, sock monkey, diapers) that makes the biggest difference: it is knowing that someone *out there* gives a damn.

At half-mast,
Amy

***
quote from today's mail:

Action springs not from a thought,
but from a readiness for responsibility.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Poems: Understanding Gravity

Understanding Gravity
By Amy Unsworth

for S.

You sleep surrounded by our sons.
I keep watch, listen to the night’s wind,
to the dog’s complaint
as coyotes scavenge, padding
through streets and meager grass.

When the sun rises
you’ll be in the wide arms
of the sky. The boys will eat
their breakfast of oranges
and strawberries, juice
dripping from their chins.

You will step from the body
of the plane and wait
for the wrench,
for silk to catch wind,
the earth rushing its claim.

***

Honorable Mention, Desert Moon Review Poetry Month Contest, 2002,
Editor's Issue, Poems Niederngasse

Someone was looking for Ents!

I am always interested in why people I don't know might be visiting. Someone was searching for Ent Poems, so I thought I'd add mine to the blog. The poem was originally published in The Minas Tirith Evening Star which is the publication for the American Tolkien Society (.org).


Lament for an Entish Wife
after Tolkien

By Amy Unsworth

Evergreen, my love, among the pins and cones I wait for you
watching through driving rain, sleet, and branches choked with ice.
Winter piles her drifts between us, the meadow a perfect
glittering sign: no footprints, no homecoming for Solstice night.

My tender shoot, autumn pains me. Every creature stirs
against the rising cold and the sap grows thick at the heart of the trees.
The gold-shot woods wear the colors of your hair and eyes,
every burning tree, a glimpse of you, swirling in brocades.

In summer, I walk through orchards tended by graceless men,
I graft branches from yellow pippins to those of crimson.
Each year the fruit grows ere sweeter, the skins stippled, a gift.
In harsh tongues, men speak of Elves, even while resting in my shade.

Come then, to the edge of the wood at Spring, see the young deer
leap up at my rustling. Here, in the thin sunlight, on the wetdark
branches of the redbud, on the tremulous arms of the dogwoods:
a signpost—the blossoms bearing the tally of all our days apart.


**************

(I'll add the rest of the publication information here-I have to go look it up.)

and remember to enter the drawing. Right now there is One entry & your odds are good!

Poem Most Recently on my Mind

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."


******************************************


I have been thinking about times of crisis recently and what the purpose of crisis is in a life. Certainly there is a wake-up call sensation that occurs when a person is plunged into a situation out of their control. I think about how I'll be remembered by my children, will they know without a doubt that they are loved by me? Will they remember only the times I grouched? I remember those days, I take them to heart:

February: 8 a.m.
by Amy Unsworth

Barely daylight, and I have been cruel
to two of those I love: the child who would not find
his coat, the dog who would not brave the cold.

What poison rises before the sun, bitter and dark
to mar the beginnings of the day? Already, I’m
on my knees, begging, for grace, for sunlight

to pierce, to break, the cover of clouds,
to shine down on us all: the boy waving curbside,
the dog returned to dreaming, my curtained heart.

I wonder if Milton knew, in his struggles documented above, how much of a comfort his poem would be to others as they too struggle to attend to the simple yet difficult task of waiting. I often subscribe to the "make it so" school of thought. Set the goal, make it so. But at times like this, when the doors seem firmly shut, I wonder if it isn't all for a reason I cannot yet comprehend. I feel as if the universe demands that I stand and wait. And so I listen to the words from centuries before to find some wisdom there. And breathe. And wait.

An Anniversary Draft

untitled (as of yet) but about my last chemo treatment:

Draft One

We entered the hospital hand in hand, heads up
face forward into the now familiar routine:
blood work by the nurse whose father
had just finished his final round of chemo,
a stop at the waiting room with the lemon drops
and the cheery staff who talked of Christmas,
Weight, blood pressure, any pain at the incision?
And how are you sleeping, eating, making love?
The visit with the doctor who is encouraged,
encouraged by the results of the lab tests,
the MRI and the CT scan; the best we could
hope for—this the last of eight, the last four
for the microscopic risk, to eliminate rouge
cells knocked loose, escaped, left behind
after the muscle with the bulge like a softball,
was unhooked from my hip much like a sock
unpinned from the clothesline, and thrown spinning
into an abyss, never to return. Then up the escalator
to ward 42, waving at the nurse who sits on the end
the bed and laughs about the antics of my sons.

We tried not to look in the open doors
where we laid, with the lines hooked into
our skin, where our scalps shone pale,
where life shrank to the odor of sweat
soured by poison we took willingly,
another round, another shrinkage,
another day to wait out the chemicals,
the tainted reek of urine, the smell
of coffee, sandwiches, soup turning
our stomachs, five days until we could ride
the wheelchair down the elevator and
to the front door and wait in the cold
on the sidewalk where the taxis idled
and babies entered the world, sleeping,
and the smell of exhaust was the sweetest
smell, of the road, of home, of putting
what we hope is past, at last, behind us.

Variations in White

Variations in White
by Amy Unsworth


After the surgeon pulled back the white sheet, noted
the absence of stars on the night globe of the mammogram,
I had forgotten. I had stopped thinking of nudging aside
the shuffling generations ahead of me, pressed
at the station’s velvet ropes, queued for the sleeper.

When the cottonmouth rose from the creek’s mud
as my son waded bare limbed, I thought of only
the long length of days without him, of wearing
the lightning strike of his body’s passage on my skin.

When the shell of fever broke and he slept,
a newly hatched bantam, his hair a shock of wet feathers,
I laundered the soiled sheets by hand. The wash water —
tinged with soap and worry— sluiced, forgetful, through the pipes.

But now, the woman— whose wartime photograph
as a bride could pass as mine— unlatches the carriage door,
and settles down there on the satin with a bouquet of callas.

I am the brunette at rail side raising a handkerchief
and the woman who sits white headed, my fingers
pressed to the windowpane frosting over with stars.

-from the Hogtown Creek Review

You Can See God Going to the Islands

You Can See God Going to the Islands
by Amy Unsworth

Where else but walking on sand and water
the last splinter of perfection, the crescent
edge of Bunut Bay, flip-flops in hand?

Or in Bolivia waiting patiently on the boardwalk
at Calacala, to see the paintings on the rising rocks,
one white llama surrounded by the red herds?

Further South the next week, among chinstrap penguins,
stepping gingerly over the clutches tucked in the rocks.
He smiles as they dive, bodies suddenly lissome, into the sea.

A day or two in Turkey visiting the springs at Pamukkale,
resting his feet in the thermal pools, touring the ruins and
recollecting the pillared architecture of Rome.

Maybe then, a few stops to admire the streaked and spotted
gazelle, giraffe, hyena and the scrawny cattle of the savanna;
to wade the Nile winding its way across the continent.

No place but then to return to the hillside gardens,
to inhale the once familiar scent of night air in Jerusalem,
the first almonds hastening to bloom.


from The New Pantagruel

Fragment

What the River’s Wife Feels
by Amy Unsworth

Under her feet, the endless mud
the shifting of pebbles, the twig-
half-decayed. The lips of minnows
against her bare calves, the wending
body of a snake, the turtle’s curiosity.

In winter, her lover’s insensible skin,
in summer, his breath rising as morning
mist. Autumn, his chiding for her
steadfastness as the leaves wither
and fall upon her outstretched arms.

Draft

Since I can't help but be influenced by what I'm reading, here's another (Another!) Adam poem. (You'll need to click on the poem to read it. I'm still working on the technology aspects of blogging. ) This is my first draft and I'm not sure if I'll work on it further as the concept has been around the block a time or two before.


Draft:

excerpts from "Ward 42"

In a recent conversation with A.D. , we have been discussing poetics and if it is helpful or necessary to attempt to define one's own poetics. I don't know that I'm ready to define my overall poetics, but I can talk a little bit about how I went about creating and crafting a particular poem.

The following are part of a poem titled "Ward 42." Each individual section tries to capture a particular emotion that I related to my experience in the cancer ward during chemotherapy. Thematically, I use the sea and weather throughout the poem to act as an ordering mechanism. Some of the sections seem to contradict each other, especially concerning the I.V. pump that delivers the combination of drugs that is at the same time destroying and rescuing the body.

excerpts from "Ward 42"

I lie on my side,
my body frames the hook of a bay,
when I ask of the future
they reply only with the rise
and fall of the diagnosis’s
changeable weather.

***

The white bed is a cradle,
the swish of the pump
a mother’s heartbeat.
I awaken with my knees pulled up
my thumb in my mouth.

***

In his white coat, the doctor
arrives midmorning;
like gulls, the interns stand watching.

***

These are three of the eleven sections. I tried to create stanzas that were vivid, visual, and could stand alone. I tried to keep the tight focus similar to that of a haiku (although these are clearly not haiku.) I also found that I used a lot of metaphorical language, perhaps because there are few words for discussing how chemotherapy "feels" vs. the technical language for what it does.

Thanks for the conversation A.D.!

On the Year's End

On the Year's End/Lines from Su Tun P'O
after Rexroth

It snows as we walk out to Yang Chou Gate.
Along the street the doorways fill with white,
like drifts of willow cotton. I watch, wait,
until the glimmer of your lantern light
has disappeared beyond the hills. Tonight,
I'll raise my cup alone, the wine sour
on my tongue. The rooftops shine with ice, bright
as your pendant of jade. From their tower
the watchmen pound their drums, only two hours
until this year will end. Under the eaves,
the icicles drone like swords where plum flowers,
in spring, will spread their scent among the leaves
and willow's cotton. After the rain,
only a drift of petals will remain.

From The Briar Cliff Review, 2004.

List

The last day of my children's school year was the third emergency room visit: May 27th.
Since then here's a list of the things I wasn't expecting to experience in my 34th year.

• Ambulance rides: 2
• Hospital stays: 9 for an approximate 55 days total (thus far)
• rounds of chemotherapy: 7 with one to go
• surgeries: 3, one for a biopsy, one to install a port for the chemo, and one to remove the tumor.
• number of staples post-tumor removal: 55
• home health equipment: walker, bedside commode, and elevated toilet seat
• number of interns: who can count?
• Doctors on my treatment team: 3
• cat scans complete with barium swallows: 4
• average number of times it takes to thread an I.V. into my arm, even with the I.V. team: 3
• times I've lost my hair: twice. It grew back when I had a break from chemo after surgery.
• poems I've written about this experience: 4
• Days where C. Dale's blog has been too difficult to read: several, especially when he's had patients with terminal diagnosis.
• prognosis: very good. the cancer responded to the chemo even though there was only a 40% likelyhood that it would.
• what my 8 year old said: "I'll love you when you're bald"
• new vocabulary words (medicine): zofran, anti-nausea
• number of labs (ie blood drawn): twice per week
• days I feel lucky to have such a supportive husband: every minute of every day

I've had a difficult time writing about this, obviously it's taken 6 months before I could even broach it on the blog. One of my doctors has encouraged me to write about my experiences, I don't know that I have much that is helpful to say, I don't feel brave or strong or as if I've had an epiphany along the way, but I can say, "here I am, here's what I know." Perhaps that can be enough.

***

Before the CT Scan

by Amy D. Unsworth

The older gentleman looks my way
a time or two.

It isn’t difficult to figure
a diagnosis:
no hair equals chemo
equals cancer equals my familiarity

with the IV team, needles, and
the shooting pain of a tube
threaded in the vein.

I’m not used to this sort of thing,
he tells the nurse
who mentions bee stings and
a few moments hum of the scan.

His doctor wants to rule out
a mass, a blockage, anything
visible that causes
a little dizziness,
a little trouble breathing.

The nurse forgets to draw the curtain
before pulling the elastic tourniquet tight.
I can’t meet his eyes
as she fails three times to find a likely vein.