Poems – Page 10 – Poetry Out Loud

The northern lights.       I wouldn’t have noticed them
   if the deer hadn’t told me
   a doe         her coat of pearls        her glowing hoofs
                     proud and inquisitive
                     eager for my appraisal
and I went out into the night with electrical steps
   but with my head held also proud
                    to share the animal’s fear
                    and see what I had seen before
   a sky flaring and spectral
                     greenish waves and ribbons
and the snow       under strange light          tossing in the pasture
   like a storming ocean caught
                     by a flaring beacon.
   The deer stands away from me        not far
                     there among bare black apple trees
                     a presence I no longer see.
   We are proud to be afraid
                     proud to share
the silent magnetic storm that destroys the stars
                      and flickers around our heads
   like the saints’ cold spiritual agonies
                      of old.
I remember        but without the sense          other light-storms
   cold memories discursive and philosophical
                     in my mind’s burden
   and the deer remembers nothing.
We move our feet        crunching bitter snow         while the storm
   crashes like god-wars down the east
                      we shake the sparks from our eyes
   we quiver inside our shocked fur
                      we search for each other
   in the apple thicket—
                       a glimpse, an acknowledgment
   it is enough and never enough—
we toss our heads       and say good night
   moving away on bitter bitter snow.

       ^{—after Akhmadulina}

Some things you don’t come back from.
The body carries on. Of late
it even travels, basks in light.
But knock and there’s no one home.

(How did I love you? With the taste
of iron on my tongue. Try again.
How did I love you? Like a man
destroying what he tries to save.)

The head still does light labor.
But often both the hands fall slack,
and all five senses, in a flock,
go south to weather winter.

    for Phil Young and my father Robert Hedge Coke;
    for Whitman and Hughes

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.

Before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.

As she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

My blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

But here I am, here I am, here I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.

When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
then, she will quake herself over. My song will make it so.

When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

You are enough

Divinity flows in your fingertips
       with light so radiant
       every beat of your heart
a victory march
made of whole universes
       stitched by the hands of creation
       with flawless design
a prophecy You fulfill perfectly with every breath

You

The sun wouldn’t shine the same without it
Creation is only waiting for You
to smile back at it

Do you see it yet?

You are enough
       For the birds to sing about
       For the seeds to sprout about
       For the stars to shoot about

Do you see it yet?

       Gardens in your speech
Fields of wildflowers in your prayers
       Lighthouses in your eyes
   No one else can see it for you

You have always been enough
You will always be enough

Your simple act of being is enough

Do you see it yet?

Copyright Credit: Andru Defeye, “Enough” from Sacramento Poetry Center Anthology (2022). Used with the permission of the author.

For weeks, I breathe his body in the sheet
       and pillow. I lift a blanket to my face.
There’s bitter incense paired with something sweet,
       like sandalwood left sitting in the heat
or cardamom rubbed on a piece of lace.
       For weeks, I breathe his body. In the sheet
I smell anise, the musk that we secrete
       with longing, leather and moss. I find a trace
of bitter incense paired with something sweet.
       Am I imagining the wet scent of peat
and cedar, oud, impossible to erase?
       For weeks, I breathe his body in the sheet—
crushed pepper—although perhaps discreet,
       difficult for someone else to place.
There’s bitter incense paired with something sweet.
       With each deployment I become an aesthete
of smoke and oak. Patchouli fills the space
       for weeks. I breathe his body in the sheet
until he starts to fade, made incomplete,
       a bottle almost empty in its case.
There’s bitter incense paired with something sweet.
       And then he’s gone. Not even the conceit
of him remains, not the resinous base.
       For weeks, I breathed his body in the sheet.
He was bitter incense paired with something sweet.

My mother will leave me her mother's deep-black
cast-iron skillet someday,
                                                I will fry okra in it,
weigh my whole life on its black handle,
lift it up to feel a people in my hand.
I will cook dinner
for my mother on her rusting, bleached stove
with this oiled star.
My mother made her body crooked
all her life to afford this little wooden blue house.
I want her green thumbs

wound around a squash’s neck

to be wound around my wrist

telling me to stay longer. O what she grew with the dust

dancing in blue hours. What will happen to her body

left in the ground, to the bodies in the street,

the uncles turned to ash on the fireplace mantles

the cousins we’ve misplaced?

How many people make up this wound?

No one taught my mother how to bring us back to life,

so no one taught me.

O what we gather and O Lord

bless what we pass on.

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death’s bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
No farther tides…High in the azure steeps,
Monody shall not wake the mariner.
This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

I am the Smoke King
I am black!
I am swinging in the sky,
I am wringing worlds awry;
I am the thought of the throbbing mills,
I am the soul of the soul-toil kills,
Wraith of the ripple of trading rills;
Up I’m curling from the sod,
I am whirling home to God;
I am the Smoke King
I am black.

I am the Smoke King,
I am black!
I am wreathing broken hearts,
I am sheathing love’s light darts;
Inspiration of iron times
Wedding the toil of toiling climes,
Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes—
Lurid lowering ’mid the blue,
Torrid towering toward the true,
I am the Smoke King,
I am black.

I am the Smoke King,
I am black!
I am darkening with song,
I am hearkening to wrong!
I will be black as blackness can—
The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man!
For blackness was ancient ere whiteness began.
I am daubing God in night,
I am swabbing Hell in white:
I am the Smoke King
I am black.

I am the Smoke King
I am black!
I am cursing ruddy morn,
I am hearsing hearts unborn:
Souls unto me are as stars in a night,
I whiten my black men—I blacken my white!
What’s the hue of a hide to a man in his might?
Hail! great, gritty, grimy hands—
Sweet Christ, pity toiling lands!
I am the Smoke King
I am black.

I know it will be quiet when you come:
No wind; the water breathing steadily;
A light like ghost of silver on the sea;
And the surf dreamily fingering his drum.
Twilight will drift in large and leave me numb
With nearness to the last tranquility;
And then the slow and languorous tyranny
Of orange moon, pale night, and cricket hum.

And suddenly there will be twist of tide,
A rustling as of thin silk on the sand,
The tremor of a presence at my side,
The tremble of a hand upon my hand:
And pulses sharp with pain, and fires fanned,
And words that stumble into stars and hide.