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The Poetry Of...
Karen Corcoran Dabkowski
Two By Four Chorus
On a day
such as this,
the soft mist rises and the raucous
chorus commences from the trees, and I hear
cardinals
calling,
drowning
out the bluejays, robins, little wrens
in twittering recompense blent into the very air
that just now splits
with beams
as though
the hills
have
taken off
a hat,
and their golden hair spills
down upon us from a heaven
that, on
a day
like this, is
really there.
Love's Grandiosity
Love is too big
for those who carry it.
They write enormous
amounts of verse
hoping to rise
above triteness, mostly failing
ignobly, and knowing it. Lovers
want the moon.
They have
the sun, but the moon
is what they want because
it's privately pure and remote. They want to stuff tomorrow
into today
and run away with it
into the past, and bury it
quietly,
till the crowds die down, then dig it up
and study it like a parent who's lost a child will, given half a chance.
Romance is
hard work, so they are gluttons for punishment, digging, digging,
singing and crying
more than old
black slaves, deeper
than the Volga
plays its
low notes,
too large, too enormously strange
to fit into time, they take love
out of it, into the
endlessly rocking chair, where sits an old stray dog who howls
when you come near it, but licks your hand.
Waits for the bone
to come
to him.
He has no name because
it's interchangeable,
usually foolish, something
nobody says out
loud in proper company.
His leash
is broken
from the times he's run away.
He looks like scattered breeds
cast to the wind,
reassembled
into a Frankenstein
high-strung
racing
mutt: one part Pekinese, two parts
unknown,
but rangy, whines when it storms and frets
and frets
at sores
nobody sees but him,
and they are treasured things
a Spanish king
acquired,
looking for
Pizarro's gold~ but
finding
Love.
Runaway
It doesn't matter
if it's seen or not
seen. Doesn't matter if the window's open
or closed, the bird will fly
through.
It matters not
whether
it's read
or not read,
read and hated, read,
debated and cast aside, this bird will fly
one wing
off,
half
a beak,
streak through
the stained glass
window,
missing a tail-
it rails
and soars. Doors don't stop it.
Doors
don't
matter
at all.
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