Romance in the New Year

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Chilean poet, Elaine Stirling, Gabriela Mistral, glosa, love poems, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

Give me your hand and we will dance;
give me your hand and you will love me.
Like a single flower we will be,
like a single flower, nothing more.

—“Give Me Your Hand” (“Dáme la Mano”) by Gabriela Mistral

I dreamed of a friend in an orange checkered suit,
garish, clashing patterns, layered shades of yolk.
He milled, a hydrant, awkward midst the artsy party crowd.
Mortified, I hissed: why are you here?
He brightened. I’ve looked everywhere!
I thought I’d lost my chance.
The places I frequent are thin in godless times;
to be Olympian, hope and patience teeter.
But enough of that. Do you like my pants?
Give me your hand and we will dance.

He drew the blinds and took me in his arms.
I do not know the steps, I whined, and shuffled stiff.
They’re easy, he replied, though I often wonder if
the laurels people hang on strife
and being an enduring wife or husband
have not muddied things a bit. You see,
I do not need a maid and trust
you’ve had enough of joyless handymen
who’d nail your freedom to a tree.
Give me your hand and you will love me.

In time, my limbs began to melt
and I misplaced embarrassment. He led,
not like a general or a cold front pushing through
but like the tall straight mast of a merchant
sailing ship, with goods fair traded
in his hold. I think that we shall be,
he whispered in my ear, a golden pair
well matched, unfolding like the petals
of a rose, unprecedent, named Liberty.
Like a single flower we will be.

We woke entangled in a king-size bed
in Tuscany beneath an arbour
woven with bay laurel and anemone.
It must be spring, I reasoned, peering
‘neath the sheets at what he’d brought.
A lot! We laughed from bed to floor
and rolled across to where our view
of self-created destiny was clear.
We’d risen, both, to all that we adore
like a single flower, and nothing more.

Happy New Year, one and all!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017
Image of Tuscan garden design by Tim Street-Porter
Translation of “Dame La Mano” by Elaine Stirling

If You Were Thinking of Coming Back

Tags

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

Tags

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

A Slightly Breathless Love Poem

Tags

Elaine Stirling, humourous verse, love poems, sonnet

Reading at the cottage tattered mysteries
in pajamas while I hear you softly
cursing at the shower head that rattles
with metallic celebration, I can
only thank the convoluted histories
that ensured we would not meet until the
hinges of our armour fell, and battles
ran their full and nonessential life span,
which I do, in answer to your queries
on the strong likelihood that you and me
will have many future weekends that’ll
steam the bedroom windows—how such a man
as you could land onto this stratosphere,
I shall not question, only hold you dear.

~~~

If this is your first time at Oceantics, thank you for dropping by. If you’ve been reading my poetry for awhile, I send you a million thanks and would also like to invite you to my beautiful new website at http://www.elainestirling.com. It is a culmination of a lifetime’s love affair with the written word. Wishing you great joy!

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

One Stroke

Tags

Elaine Stirling, Horacio Quiroga, Jules Michelet, light erotica, love poems, magical realism, nagual

Man hunts and struggles. Woman intrigues and dreams;
she is the mother of fantasy and of the gods.
She possesses second sight, wings that permit her to fly
toward the infinite of desire and imagination…
Gods are like men: they are born and die on a woman’s breast.

—Jules Michelet

~~~

But man, too, intrigues and dreams.
I know this to be true
because of you

because of you
feathered god, who
with one stroke of your feather

the pearls that I scattered
in gutters and sties
the pollen I blew
into angry men’s eyes
the syrup I dribbled
the platters I cracked
to uphold disingenuous
plots

reassembled
to banquets
and breakfasts in bed
with a long-lashed lover
who knows his Quiroga
while honey bees swoon
spilling marigold
nuggets

and the slop yards
I ran from
with one stroke
of your feather
have reclaimed
their true nature
as houses of treasure—

and now you’re not
writing love poems.

Well, that same
feathered god whose
wingspan we share
has sent me
to tell you
the breast
you will die on
can’t find you.
She aches.

One stroke,
one stroke
is all
she will need.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Translation of J. Michelet, © E. Stirling, 2014

Endless You

Tags

Elaine Stirling, light erotica, love poems, romantic verse

The endlessness of you, I wrap
in folds of sable, crush
fresh petals of the tree you smuggled
from Seville and sprinkle them
across our bed. Who says
that nothing rhymes with orange
never kissed the slope of you
or slept exhausted, shutters open,
with their cheek against your thigh
while sycamores, their boughs
outstretched in graceful meter
called Saharan winds to dance.

I find it strange, you said
once with surprise, the love
affair this world has with grief.
Do they not see that love
precedes the lover, always is,
en route and here and flowing
through? What else is there
for us to do but lavish?

In those times between
when afterglow begins to
fade and memories like old
linen crack and yellow, turn
away—toward me! You’ll see
I’m here again and not so differently,
though better. First, a brush against
your nape, a scent—and quickly
then, a silhouette proportioned
in the way you know me best.

Remembering what is to come
proves simpler than it seems. I throw
the windows open to the orange-
scented breeze and hear like distant
castanets the endlessness of you.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Ring Tones

Tags

Elaine Stirling, love poems, poetry, rhyme royal

I heard you first through river stones, three rings
of gneiss that leaped across the beach through tides
to reach my leaden stride when everything
seemed hopeless, split in two and worse…beside
myself, embedded, porphyritic, dried
of everything but tears. How strange those years,
an under-rhyme that only you could hear.

You called last night between my dreams and played
a rhapsody. I did not catch the ring
yet something of your pillow scent arrayed
itself across my bed, a daring thing
for you to do when we have yet to spring
the news. For now, let’s keep the prying eyes
away and love with adamant disguise.

I know the sighs and breadth of you. Through false
concentrics I have learned to navigate
disconsolates with rattling cups and waltz
straight into your encircling arms, no strait
and narrow paths for us to tolerate
when more and all conspire this joy to grow
above, with rings of river stone below.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Photograph by author, stone from
northern shore of Lake Superior

Pockets of My Heart

Tags

Elaine Stirling, love poems, new romance, poetry, the Slipstream Series

The pockets of my heart
admit no coin, the silent folds
wherein I keep love’s promissory
notes are not for prying fingers
sewn nor bribe, long after purchase
sought and turned away.

Whate’er I thought and did
when love had seemed to turn
his back is of no consequence
to what I hold and trade and
credit well today. My heart
no ledger keeps, but neither will
she stand, a little match girl
shivering, in cold and wind
when open arms and crackling
fire wait at home to kiss these
hands and warm the bottled
ink I bought in Christwell’s
High Street shop and
carry in my pocket
just for you.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013