Passionless

22 November 2005

I thought I was supposed to feel
A great deal more than what I do

The sun has set
The rosy glow receded long ago
Slate replaced the passionate
Array of heather-cloud embers

Moon and stars gently grace
The night sky
Dark as pitch and blacker yet

Still
Your grace abounds

Passionate or passionless
You remain
The same

Softening Epiphanies

21 November 2005, 9:43 PM

Clouds are draped like glowing
Heather set ablaze by light of setting
Suns retreating swiftly toward Horizon

Slate advances
Rose recedes

I grieve this softening reprieve

Yet praise ascent of Moon and Stars
Keeping watch o’er all we are
All we’ve been
All we’ll be as wax and wane the suns
Of years to come


© 2005 Maria Stuart

I May Be a Poet

17 November 2005, 11:29 P

I may be a poet

Though to name one's self thus means very little
One's name ought not to come from one's self
And yet I feel the need to say it

I may be a poet

For where one sees a sycamore
I see a child reaching hard for her father
A maiden yearning for her lover
And in the tire swinging from her branches
I see the two, the child and the woman
Hiding fast in shame of having lost all
For having lost both father and lover

And where one spies a butterfly
I note her yellowed wing, tipped with
The fire of setting suns
Anxious at the thought of being seen
Anxious at the thought of not
Angry for the anxious nature of her flight
Flying nonetheless, ceasing not to lavish
Kisses on the daisies of her emerald lea

The bird which wings her path across the sky
She is a woman rising from the ashes of a life
Which outlived someone else's intent
She'll fly and dazzle 'til her strength is spent
Then fall back to the earth once more
To begin her task again

And where one finds a river flowing wide
I see the grief of passing years, churning
Through the rapids and the rocks
And through the quiet places too
Always through the silent rushes
Teaching them to stand up straight and tall
Against her current
Until they take their very life from her
Gracious brutality

I may be a poet

For once I sat within these walls
And fancied it a stagnant pool
The very nature of the space
Implied that what had once entered in
Would never find a rill running out again
The pictures hung hard, the couch sat heavy
The very air refused to move
Nor to welcome anything which might bring life

Yet now I see the paintings free to morph
Into realities I had not yet imagined could be
Truth flows in, around these walls
Carries all through time, about and in
And back again, out through the doors

This place is but a passing moment
I see, feel, hear, taste Reality becoming
As I sit within these walls
Now become a lovely streamlet bearing all
Including me, through space and time

In time it turns a mighty river
Carrying this life into Eternity
Where I shall no longer feel the need
To name myself a poet

Emesis

14 November 2005, 10:19 PM

This emesis prolonged itself
Long since void of aught
Except bile-bitterness
Involuntary spasms cease

Her hair
Not plastered to her face
Held gently by one hand
As another cools the burning of her brow

Mops away the salty seas
Ill-gotten tears
For which the hand that wipes them
Is not responsible

Though sorrowful
Yet gladly did this Father sit beside her
As she wept and all the wretched grieving
Would have kept behind her lips

Except his arms around her frame
Expelled and comforted the shame
Held before her face a glass
Reflecting for the child her name