Grace
Cavalieri: Six Poems
TRENTON
TRANSIT | THOUGHTFORMS | GOOD
GOLLY, MISS MOLLY | IN THE BEAUTY
PARLOR | After Taking The Train To
Martinsburg | EASTER
SUNDAY
Grace
Cavalieri is the author of ten books of poetry and numerous produced
plays. Two recent books are: Sit Down Says Love
from The Argonne Hotel Press, Word Wrights Magazine, 1620
Argonne Place NW, Washington, D.C.20009. www.wordwrights.com.
Heart on a Leash, Red Dragon Press, P.O. Box 1945, Alexandria,
Virginia 22320-0425.Grace Cavalierie has written texts
and lyrics performed for opera, stage and film. Grace
Teaches poetry workshops throughout the country and is on the
poetry faculty of St. Mary's College of Southern Maryland.
She produced and hosted "The Poet and the Poem",
weekly, on public radio (1977-1997) presenting 2,000 poets
to the nation. She now produces this series once a year from
the Library of Congress via NPR satellite. Grace has received
the Pen-Fiction Award, The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award,
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and
awards from the National Commission on Working Women, The WV
Commission on Women, The American Association of University
Women, plus others. She received the inaugural Columbia
Merit Award for "significant contribution to poetry".
Grace also received the inaugural playwriting award from West
Virginia Commission on the Arts. She writes full-time
in West Virginia where she lives with her husband, sculptor
Kenneth Flynn. They have four grown daughters.
TRENTON
TRANSIT
If
you go back in time, be careful,
you
may stay there.
Leaving
State and Broad, the bus turns left. How many times have I
been
there without the fare. But this time I'm with my father.
We
move down Willow to Prospect. I tell him about the box of beads,
my
necklaces.
The purple ones I lift to show how if you love your work,
they'll
sparkle. His face separates red with pain, explaining that he's
sorry
he
favors my sister, but he always will. He can't help it. The
edge of my mind
is
honed to take this, over the years, thin as steel, bends to shape,
accommodate.
The
bus is now on Prospect. I love this part. Porches narrow and sweet
with light.
Painted
like Autumn sun on wood. In two more stops we'll be there.
Past
Mr. Sprague's Hardware Store, I turn a page in my book--a long
story of a Japanese
girl
who's been my friend throughout, her sly shyness teaching me silence.
How
strange to change a living adventure by closing this book.
Gregory
School on the left, now gone. Ellsworth Avenue coming up. It's
wonderful
to
be with someone I've known as long as my father. Yet I never can
guess
which
of us will get off first.
In
the film about the bus, the man who's whistling is not really
making music.
Behind
the screen someone else makes the sound, and then it's fit
together
perfectly.
Not like us.
Movement
inside motion on the bus is louder now. Driver will call out a
street, but it's
hardly
the one we'd have chosen. How to know which is ours? If given
a fair chance,
back
then, even if we recognized the destination, we wouldn't have
known
what to name it.
THOUGHTFORMS
for
Ken
After
getting off the bus,
the
man with the sports page
woke
the beggarlady up
on
her corner
to
give her a dollar bill,
without
her asking,
I
told my husband.
"That's
what giving is"
he
answered.
GOOD
GOLLY, MISS MOLLY
for
Jan
Somehow
I think you'd love to hear about the line between
detail
and loss as the motorcycle and I drive into an amber fog,
Orpheus
out of a 50's film into tangerine light playing on
the
fronts of windows blurring so fast between devotion and death.
Lying
on a rumpled pillow listening to the stars,
feeling
gladness for reasons known only to them,
old
lovers and friends watch as morning goes on,
framing
empty houses, then I'm riding again
into
a sequel of childhood, or the other side of it, a life
halved
by dark. Not too bad during the day,
but
awful when I think you can't visit me
with
our picture of sun bonnets and a watering can.
Up
the long flight of relativity, we're certain
to
lose love, before we can waste it, wanting more than we can use.
Into
the neighborhood, into the yellow light, something in my teeth
says
I
don't want to be there when I reach your house.
IN
THE BEAUTY PARLOR
She
liked the literal level of hair
the
talk about men and their work.
Women
standing behind chairs
goddesses,
blonde, brunette, and red
calming,
combing.
She
could forget the dream of the
house
under the earth
the
steel steps down
no
way out
the
baby put down to sleep in a
room
- Why did she shut the door?
What
kind of a door has no handle?
She'd
force it open, get the baby
Push
it - shoulder against wood
"We
put down thirty dollars for you today"
the
stylist said.
Language
was not built for her so
she
murmured a thank you that
came
out like a growl
which
meant she was grateful
for
something she
wanted
instead
of something she didn't.
Everyone
was standing so near to her she
cried.
Maybe this is what love is.
No
one loved me anymore than they did, she thought
After
Taking The Train To Martinsburg
--for
Angel
Did
you think that I could
Come
to the mountains
Where
it is raining
Without
finding something to praise,
Only
this time it is a dream
Shimmering
like the new green
Out
every window,
The
remembrance of traveling
When
young, feeling that
Something
was needed but finding
The
porches seemed small
From
a distance,
Then
left with nothing in particular
Your
cheek next to mine
And
how I'd like to show you
The
mourning doves building
Their
nest in the crook
Of
that far tree
Stick
by stick by stick
As
if it will last forever.
EASTER
SUNDAY
--for
Angel
Will
you accept my deepest
Apology
for having told you
The
facts of life
At
the dinner table,
"The
spiritual being is born
From
the animal man,"
For
sacrificing you
To
the ceremony of the family,
For
failing to tell you that
Our
factory sold airplanes
Not
apples and
That
we come from Alabama
And
our name is Allan,
That
images are not facts
That
eternity is experienced
In
this moment when my eyes
Shine
white and are perfectly
Balanced
by the truth.
Six
poems © Copyright by Grace Cavalieri. All rights reserved.
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