Today I Shall Wear a Green Dress

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Elaine Stirling, fixed verse, Kew Gardens, poetry, rondeau quatrain

“There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass,
from the dust of a thousand country roads.”

—Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County

~~a rondeau quatrain~~

today I shall wear a green dress
and reread excerpts from Madison County
eat cheese and spinach pie with flaky pastry
paying less attention to the obvious

cholesterol, they say’s the cause of stress
it may be the reverse, a dearth of poetry
today I shall wear a green dress
and reread excerpts from Madison County

the media diet of desperation and duress
I’ve tossed like arsenic. Gentility
I’ll sip instead, chaw down on parody
whatever celebrates our tendency to mess…

…things up

today I shall wear a green dress
and reread excerpts from Madison County
eat cheese and spinach pie with flaky pastry
paying less attention to the obvious

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
This genteel snapshot is the view from the reading gardens of our local library.

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Anticipating Emerson

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content sales, Elaine Stirling, family homes, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry

~~a pantoum~~

I hug the house of stone and memory
who’s emptying her ghosts today
escorting virtue out on teacups
giving vice and sawhorses full rein

who’s emptying her ghosts today?
the fairies at the toadstool ring will help
giving vice and sawhorses full rein
to ride the coach roads once again

the fairies at the toadstool ring will help
they showed me how to dig to China
to ride the coach roads once again
sitting council at the Puritan stone fences

they showed me how to dig to China
on the days I run away between meals
sitting council at the Puritan stone fences
anticipating tramps with Emerson

on the days I run away between meals
escorting virtue out on teacups
anticipating tramps with Emerson
I hug the house of stone and memory

~~~

Only the repeating, interweaving lines of a pantoum can come close to expressing the emotions of saying goodbye to a childhood home where nothing—and everything—seemed possible.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

If You Were Thinking of Coming Back

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Elaine Stirling, love poems, poetry

You who’ve been compared
to the greatest love poet,
were seen feeding swans
from a green canvas bag
on the jetty where the battle
of San Vicente was lost.

I wonder if you know
that drunks who rhyme badly
are trampling the flowers
we once called snowdrops.

You who’ve been remembered
as philosopher-king,
are heard in the chambers
of an ostracized nation
by cleaning women
whose husbands drowned
for the profit of sea bass.

Every night, they stroke your face
on coins that buy nothing
and tell their children
of the whispers
no senator can hear.

If you were thinking of coming back,
today would be a good day.

You’re strong enough now
to ignore the trampling. Twitches
of the dispossessed are nothing to fear.

The one or two aging cocks
who thought they could supplant you
are down, at last, to their final
grasping syllables.

Holding up a hand
against the sun, I see you,
as I always do,
through my fingers.

Today would be a very good day.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

my love has smuggled honeycomb

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al-Andalus fixed verse, Elaine Stirling, love poems, medieval Arabic form poetry, zejal

~~a zejál~~

my love has smuggled honeycomb
sweet dripping from our ancient home
where cedar breathes on scented loam

he comes to me in waning moon
disguised in pedlar’s rags with broom
and dustbin, clanking knives and spoons
around his head a buzzing drone

I recognize as one who spies
a counterfeit with hungry eyes
who snuffles for some holy prize
denied him all these years alone

my love and I at dawn escape
while disillusioned gravitate
toward dreams that briefly satiate
I draw from him a shuddering moan

our honeyed lips and fingers tease
the bowstrings of new ecstasies
while pollen-gorgéd honeybees
to fecund, waiting queens fly home

excited that my love and I
are firmly reunited by
the downbeat of a butterfly
who drifts across the caliph’s throne

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015