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| Selected Poetry by Lenore Plassman |
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| Centering. The summer grass yellowed, its stalks falling in straight windrows lowering the Farmall�s mower blade the farmer swipes at his face with a blue bandana As he trundles down another row, The mice and killdeer skittering In the mellow June melt. The tractor wheels follow the land�s contour The afternoon bitten as an apple Ripe and freshly torn from the acre orchard In bumping over a rusted Prince Albert can, the pasture svelt and shaven, its rodent dens exposed he slices heaven open middle earth emergent as day old growth on cheek and lip grumbling from afternoon into shadowed twilight. What would I have if I had not Your strength and What there be in this world For me if I had not your Constant presence ? There would only be sheets pallid Memoried heat Wool blankets stiff in winter ice And aching limbs unlimbered. I write as August melds into December�s tang Our mornings rituals of wash And nourish and leave taking. A letter written well, This kitten purr This contented rumble a burrowing Out from snow tumbled Beside stoop and window, December warmth snuggled as sleep And winter light combine A meditation serenely assumed . " You�ve thin hair like I " Our eyes met as I walked by your table Sandwich in hand, your eyes bright at noon time. We�d been a team earlier, I pushed as you pumped your legs In an arc that aimed for the winter sky, Searching thin mite Your words burrowed in Leaving my hands busy scratching The itch thirty-five years old. |
| FEET COLD ON PLANKED FLOOR Feet cold on the planked floor, Fear�s cat feet plunking up my spine, Cataracts obscure her vision Yet she walks, Whiskers extended, The pads of her feet soft But determined as she continues, Defining the vertebrae and chilling the marrow, Her fur brushing my own antennae, My own need to wail in the night. You�ve locked and bolted the door And in the act, Engaged my driven curiosity, My passion rising even as the click Resounds, A crashing wave striking an unknown shore, I would knock once more, Through anger and rebuff, My entreaties perhaps gaining me entrance, A caress or a listening silence, What would you have? I will stand outside and being there, The dark hours not ceasing, I will stand vigil. It seems almost sacrilege To strike and end even a flys life, Here in this dry country, The arm upraised an act Of deep under ground waterways, A surfeit of energy, Spillage a carnage, Brutal disregard for flight Or flicking wing. Within November spider webbed evenings, Woven memoried dream scapes Shelter and console your locking joints The synapses in your mind Conjoining past and future journies Letting go of that tract of earth and sky, Its essence loosed from between My clutching joints This then is the essence of grief, This trudging from out the gate, No longer the champion and savior Now a hapless bystander, The cedar branches, the grape branch Torn and tossed onto the pile, Scorched and beyond healing Our mother cries for ritual Receiving instead crumbled rock, Her tears encased in the hillock�s core. |
| Nebo Franklin: A north carolina kind of man One to offer us kids Week old fermented applesauce cake. You knew how to transform Yellow binder twin Into an Indian halter Your fingers twisted round The pied ponies mane Bent to the task , Nebo, your time was mine And when you last drove Down past the snowball bushes I felt the loss of A forever kindness unbought. Sue: " Rape! Rape!" The syllables stones Cast hard against our glass exteriors The cloth that clothed you Petals fallen during another storm The women grouped behind me Grasping door handles, walls. Standing, I clenched a chair back Mouthed Determination, a bonfire My words cedar dried many seasons The flames licking at your anger Consuming knives and edged flint. You gathered your layered bouquet And in your fleeing The women�s eyes smoked stale Your fear and need somehow Had erred from feminine to masculine Our non-acceptance a ladder Downside up. |
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