The Poetry Of...
Karen Corcoran................................................
Dabkowski................................................
An Essential Space
I could hear them crying
like children, a murder of crows
in heavy
humid air. Uncomfortable
blanket that presses into
disquiet and our fears
until we're nearly strangled
by the effort to seize a fuller breath. That it was death,
there was
no doubt. Their excited cries
circling somewhere,
swooping as I stood against the bricks
and cricked my neck
in looking
after them,
yet only heard a frenzy
carried
on leaden air.
I butted my smoke,
and stole out farther into the lot
to lean across a Chrysler, hot
to the touch in sultry, cooked, mid-afternoon
July,
until I spied
the scavengers, worrying at the leader
bird, who had something
in his beak: a pink and unpleasant thing
my myopic eyes were prevented from seeing
cleanly,
though I stretched and squinted
mightily. Sometimes we're saved
by things
being just beyond our reach: I heard
the noise of feeding- didn't see
the bleeding, not at all.
And though
I love crows, I had to face
that even what's beloved, if seen
in a certain light, might
become
monstrous if studied
right before the eyes: in birds,
in life,
in love, I think a bit of mystery,
looking through the eyelashes
goes
a long, long way. It's in spaces
beauty lies most comfortably, and hardly ever
with an element
of surprise,
for that is where
the danger- if there are
dangers, will reside: you'll hear it
before you see it. When you see it,
it's too late. That essential
space is taken.
And whomever
said "familarity breeds
contempt"- that one knew
crows.
That one
knew
what
there is to know
of the grace there is in space: the fringe
of eyelash beads- that
draw
of he to she
across a ravine,
and that the sweetest
of imagings- the most magical lights
we've seen
all live in the
distance.
Absolute
Watching you walk
through the door, I know, I know
I love you
tall man: storklike, long
legged, face like a boy with a contradiction of graying
crewcut. What do we do
with feelings steeped and deepening over the years
to a fine pot of tea? We let them steep. We keep them
in our hearts, a murmurous, sweet
and half-heard song
before our sleep
when the eyes are open, peeping at the stars
when the stars feel close enough to touch but we don't dare.
We watch them twinkle mystery and murder our despair by
being out there shining in the dark as you shine for me
in days of misery, days of delight, you are
the left hand
of my right: the one who sights for me-
now- and when I am old, until those very stars
burn blue,
and black
and cold,
you are the one.
Magical Mystery Tour
In the grayish,
ghostly drape before the day in the pre
dawn, spawner of strangest dreams, there is a screen
torn. Thoughts are born that can't be coaxed
at any other time.
It is the wine
of the twenty
four,
the darkest, ruby red, where things unstacked
in the
almost black
fall into proper rows, thready edges
suddenly ravel
into whole; are cleanly pressed. The mess
of minds, their nefarious scatterlings
shepherded neatly into flock, where what is forgotten
or half remembered
embers reddish
in the smoke;
what hasn't a name
announces it, as Gabriel
did with the virgin, saying, "the blessing
is within"- while clockweights
hang together
in slender
pre-rooster
scoop of day
when everyone's
a poet, when the rime
is for the plucking, fat
and rich.
