River Speak

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Elaine Stirling, poetry

Now that all the streams
have come together
do you have
the strength
to ride
the current
here
of this enormous
river
can you hold
yourself
upright and true
while banks
seek to collide
compress
and crushing you
would matter not
but only prove
that little twerps
have nothing new
to say
there was a time
you thought it so
and now that you
have found
your voice
can you
hold perfect pitch
while others
with their buckets
of confusion
slip and drop
and patch
what can’t be
fixed
and you content
to let them
be
and finally
in this avalanche
of crumbling walls
and timely space
can you hold still
and rest
like sparrows
in the hand
of God
and never lose
your poise
or belly-urge to laugh?
Did I hear right?
Three times a yes?
Then mightiest
are sure to
gather where
you are, and me
and all the rest
here in the
midst of them.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image: Grand River, Elora Gorge,
Ontario, Canada;
photographer unknown

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Nocturne

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Elaine Stirling, poetry

How I should like to write a nocturne,
flit from line to rhyme invisible
beyond the cobbled feet of meters,
wingéd, silent lepidoptera;

and if I should chance to come upon
an ocelot by night, I’d ask him
please to show me how to mimic leaves,
slip through dense and artless verse unseen.

To capture the sigh a meteor
evokes across the heavens when she
flies, I’d give a thousand forms to learn,
consent for lifetimes to go unheard;

though I do not believe the nocturne
seeks a bargain nor the anguished soul.
The quieted she likes, invites us
to a vale pretenders cannot reach;

sprinkled at our feet soft anapests
and dactyls glow, enticing creatures of
the night to share their secret poetry.

~~~

Anapest: a technical term in poetry that applies to words or combinations with two light stresses followed by a hard stress, such as ser-en-ADE or “in a JIFF”.
Dactyl: a word or combination with one hard stress followed by two light stresses, as CAL-en-dar or “PRI-or to”.
Nocturne refers to musical compositions and not poetry at all, hence, the poet’s dilemma. Nocturnes can also refer to nighttime prayers in a Liturgy of the Hours.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of moth from http://www.howstuffworks.com

high, hot, pure

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Elaine Stirling, poetry

I burned my little house of shame
today. A torch I built of pitch
and sprays of purple cone, their heads
grown black for having bloomed. I looked
around to see if every act
I’d once locked in was, of its own
volition, out. A few remained.

The flame burned high enough to light
my way through paths grown in of where
I’d run away and no one knew:
too busy polishing their knives and spoons
in case the pastor came for tea.

The flame burned hot enough to wake
the genius who outside our gate
would sleep curled like a nautilus.
His eyes lit up. You’ve grown, he laughed,
into a decent reprobate.

The flame burned pure enough that bones
of quickened poets spun above
the ashes, and the anarchist
whose shock of copper hair I love
let out a canto-levered yowl.
This space is yours, now make it new!

I burned my little house of shame today.

~~~

“Make it new.” Ezra Pound, on the act of poetry.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
This beautiful image of a purple coneflower, post-bloom, comes from http://www.identifythatplant.com

Something More?

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Elaine Stirling, poetry

Was there something more
I wanted than my children
to be happy? For they are.

Was there something more
I hoped to do than what I love
to do? Because I’m doing it.

And is there something
greater than the peace
of mind of health and
time that’s mine to do
with as I wish? To love
and be loved with a passion
that grows stronger as the
years unfold? For all these
things, yes, every one of them,
I have and am and do—
and yet, of course!

There’s always something
more of happiness that seeks
itself, solutions toppling in
like puppy dogs in barrels
rolling out with eagerness,
outweighing future questions
I’m not keen or quick enough
to ask—although I did, at every
turn of hardship and despair.

The proof of love, its steadfast
listening, pours abundance
over me, continuous, an
avalanche of dreams come
true and truer still, a force
that doesn’t force of sums
and multitudes aligning
and defining, just beyond
the smoky veil of my
own reticence. A little
blow, not even that, a
puff of letting go, of maybe
so, is all it takes to see
the something more that’s
always been and ever will
be right in front of me.

~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image of Roman Amphitheatre,
Arles, France, by author

5 Little Songs* of a Sunday

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Elaine Stirling, form poetry, marking a milestone, sonnets

Prelude

In times of rocky hope, when circumstance
has piled heaps, and I can’t touch, taste, see
my place amidst Infinity, no chance,
I feel disgraced, the very stuff of me
misplaced, it’s good to be reminded that
three strands I own to pull me out like
rope, to knit or weave like worsted wool, pat
and firm, unbreakable, no stronger dike.
Each strand of 3-ply strength retains a name
that no one but myself can weaken, and
I have: to please and score, avenge, defame…
Yet beauty, faith, desire remain, a band
I shall employ today, five little songs
arranged to bid the miscreants, so long!

Beauty

Beautiful is what I am, adored by
every cell and molecule, the center
of Creation through which anything I
see may be. Through you, this beauty enters
too, no greater, lesser, but by thought. Now
here is where the trouble starts. Someone laid
a trap across the path to disallow
the knowledge that I’m beautiful, preyed
because they had forgot. I saw grotesque
in disapproving faces of the ones
I loved. Warned to battle ego, a test
of vanity against my native sun.
Today, I reinstate my radiance,
and all Creation revels in the dance.

Faith

First and foremost, may I say, this f-word’s
not a fevered rant on what you believe.
That, my friend, is bigotry. My inward
strand of faith requires no proof, relieves;
the proof is aftermath. Shy guide, he leads
me through my dreams and inclinations, seeks
no solace or consent, yet draws a bead
on what I want and how, ignores the cliques
who whisper and complain. As traces of
what I once knew as true, this brand of faith
is elevated memory fueled by love.
Agree or not, you’ll see it on my face,
and yours will turn you toward me or away.
It matters not. We’ll meet some other day.

Desire

Is there a thread so frayed, so tattered by
the righteous and afraid than that which holds
the course of what I want, and more? To lie
in bed with my desire, to rise, enfold
the wanting, every moment grow, my friend,
this is the why! I won’t consent to crawl
for you nor call it sin. Our life will end,
but not this love of living, no! In all
that comes to me, desire paves the way; she
braids my faith and beauty to a seamless
robe, a testament with no debate, free
to feel and think and procreate. I bless
by throwing windows open to desire,
receive in turn the consummating fire.

Epilogue

And so, with misadventure far behind,
bright shining moments joined, assemblies pure
with expectation and delight, I find
more cause than ever to be sure
that what I think and feel about myself
brings light sufficient to the rest. The road
you take, if true to beauty, faith, yourself,
will cross with mine, it must, but what you load
of pain is yours alone. I can but sing
these songs and listen for small harmonies,
while near at hand, I know, some greater thing
awaits with joy, the spirited to please.
Some glimpse of me you may, at times, suspect;
howe’er it looks, we are not finished yet.

~~~

*Sonnet: from Italian, soneto, meaning “little song”

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image from Ewe and Me Yarns

My Anima

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all is truly well, anima, animus, being easy on yourself, Elaine Stirling, humour, humourous poetry, Jungian archetypes, the shadow

She isn’t quite a friend
of mine, a bead of light,
a trickle, spark…I see her
in the silence when I step
outside, and outside hasn’t
noticed yet. A grip of cold,
a rise of sweat, she carries
her own weather and dispenses
like a medic from a space
shaped like a sack that smells
of cardamom varieties
of pills, some bitter,
mostly sweet, a few
that taste of offal grilled—
quite awful till one gets beyond
the need to cluster-rhyme
at every friggin’ trill and turn.

She’s not my Mum
or Grandma, though she
knows the matrilinea from
whence I came down to their
baby toes, and in a pinch
could stand for me and often
has, when heels and early
graves I’ve dug. She’s not
a ghost, though scare you
out your wits she will when
fancy strikes, and haunt
surrounding tables at posh
restaurants until my date
and I are quite alone. She’s
shown the way when I’ve
been lost more times than I
can shake my sticks at, then
she elevates my thoughts to
grasp, however briefly, that
the path is always cleared
well in advance. If I’d be less
a scaredy pants and more a
glad participant, her sight
and mine would true align,
and life would furl before me
like a set design, a plan divine,
divined by me and her with
opposites and shadows central
cast. Of future, present, past
she is my every person, place,
and thing, my noun renowned
and infinite, she is my anima.
You have one, too.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image by Ben Stirling, ©2005

Speak to Me of Novels, Mr. Greene

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Elaine Stirling, Graham Greene, imagination without limits, literary cross-discipines, magical realism, narrative poetry, novel writers, poetry, the creative process

Graham Greene, novelist, (1904-1991)

Speak to me of novels, Mr. Greene,
those vast terrains you seeded from
misfired sparks and neural floods,
unmitigated impulses that laid out
end to end today, we’d medicate,
eradicate, restoring you to moral
and to level, playing, boring,
disenchanted fields.

I’ve heard it told by one
who knew a clerk who kept
your cover on the western coasts
of Africa that novelists are further
down the road of disingenuous
than spies. We must be without
shame a fugitive, outrunning
fusillades of politic, pretending
faiths until we know the rites by
heart—though yours you never
dropped—refraining from the urge
to boast. There is no greater
theft or flagrant waste, you said,
than stealing from a character
her actions and her words to win
a spate of praise. The glory days
of one who writes long fiction
live within; she radiates.

Speak to me, kind sir, of pace
and plot, the boldness that it takes
for witnessing and laying out
and never stepping in. How do
I plug the holes, endure?
And you explained: let no one
judge, come near the planes
of your terrarium. Their imprints
and their breath will only fog
and kill the shoots; your world
is one apart and must be so,
yet be more real than any
but the truest kiss.

And now I hope
you will not take amiss,
Moiselle, I step again into
the borderlands where first
we met. Remember what to
keep, when to forget, and how
to see anew. I will say this
of your composure, in the hindsight
of our pleasure, you have much
of greater worlds and souls
than mine yet to compose.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014