Your fingers boy were miracle enough
All that sweet fat around
The tiny bones and joints
The nails just barely there
Your hair the silk of baby corn
Lay perfectly across your head
As though arranged with
Some consideration and
Your steady eyes adhered to mine
Already questioning my place
As much as yours but more
In expectation than to judge
And so I judge myself and you
Calmly warm my trembling arm
© 2021 Guy Holliday all rights reserved
You might as well have been the weather
Come in from the west
Face into the blush of sunrise
Long draw of the sea behind you
Rising over the shore
Arms out arms out arms out
Relentlessly new at first then
Willingly given to me and more while
Always increasing your stake
You were damp as new life
A fern still furled and turning
To the sun
© 2021 Guy Holliday all rights reserved
I’ll come to know you as I know
That every down defines an up
Each yes a no to make it so
So you are just as real to me
As all the love and joy I find
In who I want to be
You are a nadir so profound so far
below absorbing light
Like some black hole were I a star
And I regrip my stake and pick away
At finding you while seeking me
And knowing us as night and day
© 2021 Guy Holliday all rights reserved
The tongue of time has come to rise
It dampens my ankles reveals the lies
That make me want to run
Some bridges lift and lay on que
Though groaning grates reveal the true
And flaking state of things
Some soar until the quiet lines connect
Enough to notice so in caution we inspect
The damage horrified
And so the licking reaches to my knees
The span will operate until release
Surprises me with a sigh
© 2021 Guy Holliday all rights reserved
A toddler, often in the house, just turned two. He is an extraordinary being, but I guess they all are. How does he think? What choices is he making? There are clues.
Mind Atlas
I want these early words you find
To be an atlas of your mind—your heart!
The bits of what you see
And know so far and who or why
Things matter as you go about your choosing
What to know and keep to call upon again.
You live an active now and then that
Makes you up
But now you choose the things
To hold too dear to lose—
The names of what it is
You’ll see a need to summon and to
Be there as you make your way
Well past what we can know of you at last.
The sun is bright this summer in Seattle. Brighter than we expect it to be. An unaccustomed companion before July 4th, when our local summer usually begins.
Our sun is metaphorically powerful, and it is among the multitude of suns that populate the universe, and the envelope of metaphors available to people so inclined. I had some fun with that for the July poem.
The sonnet form here is actually faithful and tight, although I deconstructed it a bit in this lineation, as I have done before.
Suns – A Sonnet
As though it were a thousand suns—
Reality aflame—come from wherever
It is such things are done (eternal truths
And rules of thumb made so for us)—
I saw you there. You
were ashine
In gossamer light—a hundred suns
Could not compare to you and how
You brought me sight of what can be
And what is so—what burns now
In my breast as though a dozen suns—
As though they shone as one—
And so the rest are chorus only—
Truth—and one is all I need—
You are the sun.
This poem, placed in the box this morning, celebrates the small glories to be found in holding a grandson.
For Now
You've tied my murmurs,
Smiling face, my scent,
My arm beneath your back--
A firm support, a light embrace--
Together into what is was
That made you grin just then
Into my widening eyes as though
We'd shared some joke
Or treasured memory,
Just ours,
From some earlier time,
As though there was one.
Now there is and it is mine
To hold for you for now.
From time to time someone will leave something for me in the poem box. This beautiful hand-painted cork appeared there recently, with a nice note from the artist.
This poem was entered into the streetcorner box for the month of March, 2021. It was inspired by my niece, who is a student at the University of St. Andrews, and by my introduction to a form of poetry called the duplex.
St.
Andrews Duplex
Her nose
is rimed cool salt the air of place
A
football arcs toward Salvators and grace
Lay near the goal if that were grace
I held her like a kitten then amazed
She had
no fear was not amazed.
I was monstrous
fearful of my strength
Fearful that my balance was my
strength.
You found a place to gauge the speed
of light
The
lowering clouds mute time and place and light
A woman
came this way before this time
A young woman had no use for time
The oysters arced from her hand to
the land
Another
day ended silent or began
Her nose
was rimed cool salt the air of place
I've fallen behind in posting the monthly poems, which are still going out to the box for the passers by. The last two months have been poems about my father, now gone, who was a Sailor in WWII. This is the poem for May:
You Rest
You fell among the fishes for a while
Perhaps a sunfish saw you pass
One dinner plate of sight
Just catching the glint of brass
Too deep already for the mourning words
The tinny music there above to reach you
And the gentle rasp of the flashing shoes
Upon the coated deck
It’s left to me the imagining
The tumble through the cold
And darkening
The way you might have done
And the settling there a bit atilt
The dust of the universe drifting down
Around your place upon the silt
Where still you rest
I work at this but my command of Middle English is poor. I like the sound of it, though, for certain subjects and moods.
