..................................................................................................................................................
The Poetry Of.
Karen Corcoran
.......................................
Dabkowski..........................................
Starting Over
I've been in love with words
forever--long
ones, short ones,
tip of the tongue ones
wrapped me
in a word cocoon from which I rarely
venture, but now it's images
I want. Colors,
shades- transparencies
and curlicues, the lusciousness
of blending
blues
and greens
in whispered delicacy
is what I'm
seeking. Trouble is, each program
leaves me
clueless-
and so
wrapped
in tight frustration, I need words again
to describe this- feeling like the six
year old I was, who went to first
grade
knowing naught
but prayers and nursery
rhymes, bad Knock Knock jokes, but not one
dipthong,
vowel or bloke named
Dick- or his sidekick- that
bitch,
Jane.
Calm And White
I'm cold. Cannot get warm. Will
take these frozen bones to bed
and think of all the times I've foolishly
given shelter to the selfsame names
that make me sick. It doesn't
have to be Latin
for a disease, a fairly common Anglo Saxon
one will do most times. A nick
name, say- a simple one from school days
can upset
my seas like
gravitation
pulls on
waves.
I've never learned
to caulk
the cracks, but I never want
to go back. I look
above, beyond what's there on past the far side
of the ridge. Someplace I'm going to, not where I'm religiously
trying to raise the dead who do not come forth easily. That trick's
been done to death, and nearly killed me
last time. Bed
is what this body wants now,
calm
and white.
Horse Dreams
Still, among the phlox,
the hocks of horses
buried deep, do dream themselves
on dusty
hard-packed roads. They hear the clip clop
of the stolen rows of moonlight, ribboned runways
where they fly,
manes combed by wind, whinneying
nightfall's strident ride through nostrils flared in freedom.
They dream,
the horses do, while standing in the stall, or grazing
lazily in phlox. Their hillocks
tightening and loosening,
the way muscle would in the rigors
of hooved flight. And where you see them feeding placidly
on the dandelions, clover,
they are one jump from the fence, where their lives
commence- they dream it, as do men, a world complete-
while letting hearts demand what they must: the horses dream us.
