Scraps of Brightness
A handful of short (short!) poems
My last post showed you the longest poem I’ve ever written; this week we’re having a rest. Here are half a dozen tiny poems — written at different times, in different moods, and usually to my confusion (“That’s it? There’s not more?”). Perfectly capable, every one, of shining a light all out of proportion to their size.
1981 Light –- a whispered word –- the ring on the water where a feather drifts down.
ENVY 1995
Crumpled paper sack
scrapes along the sidewalk,
dreams the flight
of origami birds.2007 Across a field of years his sergeant’s voice comes booming. Her shoulders stiffen; even now, even still, she is enlisted, under orders she has failed to follow.
KUNDALINI CAT 2009
Yes, just there
where my tail coils out, my spine
springs free from my body
to dance in the air –-
rub just there.HUMMINGBIRD 2011
Fleet at rest
on pineapple sage:
beak a twig,
wing a leaf,
throat a ruby blossom.
Hidden in brightness,
gone again,
blossoming fleet in air.NOTE TO DR. WILLIAMS 2024
Much also
depends
on wisteria
petals
in a pale-scented
drift
on the worn
brick steps.[You can listen to an audio version of these poems — so many poems! less than two minutes’ recording time! — using the little widget above the photograph.]
“Light — a whispered word…” is a haiku, or meant to be. I’m fond of this one because it quietly celebrated a turning point in my then-life: not finished with the hard time I was having, but beginning to see a way through.
Envy appeared in a chapbook that I self-published1 during another, um, educational life-season, and it was the poem that everybody commented on from the collection. My cynical self wondered if that was because it was shortest. Maybe so; maybe they all were grateful for a single brief metaphor, poignant or not.
“Across a field of years…” was written during a poetry workshop I led at a church retreat. I’d brought in a handful of extra-generic sentences — “He enters the room,” “They are eating” — and invited folks to build poems by restating the generic sentences as specifically and vividly as they could. I think this one started out as “She hears him.” Indeed, she does.
Kundalini Cat — I mean, why not?
Hummingbird — a fleet, darting poem for a fleet, darting subject.
Note to Dr. Williams — We’ve all written at least one of these, right? At least I didn’t relitigate the plums in the icebox. And those brick steps littered with wisteria blossom are a sight on which much at least of my sense of well-being depends, every spring.
🌿
Do you have a favorite, from this half-dozen? Do you have a short poem of your own that you’d like to share? Comments are open; let’s fill them up with brief shining treasures.
“Self-published,” in this case, means, “typed up a quite nice template in WordPerfect, had saddle-stapled copies made at Kinko’s, and presented them forcibly to family and friends.” That counts, right?
Many military brats will recognize that one. All are short and sweet, the paper sack dreaming of flight. Each one a curt, sharp pleasure leaving an indelible mark on me. That is what I call poetry. You can't hear it but I am clapping.
Each one a little treasure, but the "Kundalini Cat" purrs in my lap :)