The Inspired Pen Poems

What Is To Be Offered

 

Ukrainian women

decorate eggs

at a certain time of year: late winter

at a specific time of day: night.

 

They have made dyes,

recipes secreted mother to daughter

from onion skin, lichen,

woad, and buckwheat husks

collected and strained beeswax

and after the chores and children are put to bed,

 

a good clean egg is chosen

and a design—

eight-sided rose pattern—

with a border of sieves to sort impurities,

a long life of meanders and perhaps

wolves' teeth for loyalty, wisdom and a firm grip.

 

Each mark

heating of the kistka 

in the candle, a dip in the wax

a line on the egg.

 

By the end, it is nearly

black with wax

memory of the design obscured

perfection surrendered.

 

The egg has sat in yellow

been daubed with green

it lingered in red, purple,

in black.

 

Before the Ukrainians,

Neolithic Trypillains had only

brown, brick red and black;

the designs, fish for its sacred self,

or a yin/yang divided

almost beyond recognition.

 

 

We make eggs for our men,

for newlyweds, crops, goats

a boost

in the rugged physical world.

 

We do this every year,

millions of eggs, holding strong

the chains shackling evil

to the mountain.

 

I remember:

form comes out of a dark place,

tools surround us,

I make the choice

with my hands.

 

              --Karin Spitfire

 

 

On Handmade Things

 

Dad saved 200 pounds of baling twine

in empty dog food bags

coarse fiber cut and saved

from square hay bales

to macramé rugs some day

when he’d have time between

farm chores or big plans

to rewire six dozen motors

saving old copper wire

to make mobiles

hanging shells and pebbles

from driftwood sticks.

 

He saw possibilities

juice can lids to replace hay rake parts,

cat food bag string, being stronger, to mend moccasins.

 

Given another 20 years,

he might have recycled

words into poems.

 

 

    ---Sharon Bray

 

Paper or Plastic

 

Did you see the cute gingerbread men

Lou made on her packages?

Just white yarn, glue and brown grocery bags.

 

Ayup, real cute.

But Amy never hesitates to say

plastic, please at the grocery store.

Or the hardware or Rite Aid, wherever

she can add to her stash,

getting ready for the summer people

who buy almost anything recycled.

 

Better than old yarn, Amy mutters

cutting strips of bag plastic,

winding balls for winter work.

 

With a crochet hook and little time

Amy turns flimsy plastic

into a few dozen strong shopping bags

and some of those tube things for keeping

more plastic bags.

 

     ---Sharon Bray

 

On Your Wedding Day

 

in this your marriage basket, strong stitches

pulled through thinnest bark of birch

layer upon layer joined together

sweetgrass beginning your circle dance

 

pulled through thinnest bark of birch

years of dreaming, growing, becoming

sweetgrass beginning your circle dance

strands bound by each adventure, sorrow, joy

 

years of dreaming, growing, becoming

give resilience and harmony to this union

strands bound by each adventure, sorrow, joy

day by day, shaping this basket anew

 

give resilience and harmony to this union

two spirit bears, courage tempered by gentleness

day by day shaping this basket anew

scent of sweetgrass at the center

 

two spirit bears, courage tempered by gentleness

in this basket polished stone, sea-green glass

scent of sweetgrass at the center

breathe with the rhythm of the earth

 

in this basket polished stone, sea-green glass

washed ashore and rocked by ocean waves

breathe with the rhythm of the earth

continue the weaving of your lives

 

washed ashore and rocked by ocean waves

layer upon layer joined together

continue the weaving of your lives

in this your marriage basket, strong stitches

 

for Alison and Bill October 9, 2011

 

                 --Carolyn Locke

 

The Potter’s Mistress

 

It's the clay that forms the potter's hand,

   patching cracks, building grooves across the fingers first,

   turning on the wheel hands into handles till

   one night he hears the hollow clink

   of his arm against the workroom sink.

That's the way the potter's owned

       (we see the cleft on sculpted stone and miss

        the bluntness left on hammering fists):

   clay malingers underneath the fleshy maul,

   forming slowly in return, the illusion

   of success in form drawn out of earth,

   hardening the potter most of all.

It's the same for red-eyed astronomers,

   machinery men who make our cars;

   thrown on the wheel, cultures inferred from shards,

   the artifacts say these men have been made our way;

   they are the amphorae raised when one no longer

   knows the music of the Plain of Jars.

That's the net effect of setting matter in motion:

   the scraped hollow up to the old man's skinny neck,

   the rasping echo of his damp insides,

   the glaze on ochre skin, fit finally

   for decorative effect and stiffened play

       (brown breasts those bowls under the

        peasant blouse of the potter's mistress there,

        and beneath her skirt. . .well-urned, you'd say?):

The potter only thinks he molds the clay.

 

               --Michael R. Brown

 

Whittling

 

Soft draw of the blade across white wood,

shavings dropping softly on newspaper,

measured note to the fire’s run.

 

Often I’ve got a thing in mind,

but mostly I let grain and curve,

knot or whorl guide what I’m at.

 

The knife feels good in my hand,

then disappears as the wood loses resistance.

It’s all draw and finish, draw and finish.

 

Most go into the fire.

I might show a few. But it’s painful when

people feel they’ve got to say something.

 

Mostly I end up with

pleasant little things, stop short

before the wood’s gone.

 

It’s better than television,

not as dangerous as a walk at night

under icy stars and otherwise empty sky.

 

                       --Michael R. Brown

 

 

“Unfinished Work”

 

My hands are weary, yet I cannot stop

 

I have not slept all night

 

For fear that I would not make things right

 

It’s almost done, I can sense it---

 

Perhaps I will finish it tonight!

 

Alas, I look out the window and see no sun in sight

 

I think one more stitch and then everything will be alright

,

But I have many more things to do until I make things right

 

---Julie Kravetz

 

Blue Delft Platter and Bowl

 

The master craftsman cast his mark

in blue-white crackled glaze.

How artfully he molded

for human hands to hold,

the edges of the platter,

the roundness of the bowl.

 

But there they hang, ensnared

in brackets on our wall,

as if these house wares from the Dutch

were much too fine to live with daily,

much too rarified to touch.

 

The platter? I would like

to place a chicken

cooked with pears on it.

And fill the bowl

with gooseberries still wet.

Or maybe just the pears –

and fill the bowl with cream –

a study in the green

of early meadows.

 

Vermeer would place the whole lot

on a silver cloth

shot through with lavender --

a bunch of purpling grapes,

three just-ripe plums,

a sugared cake, an old

carafe of sweet gold wine –

 

a composition flawless

but inert – until

the burgher’s handsome daughter

 

sent to sit for him awhile,

arrives

with a small, pearl-handled fruit knife

and a naughty little smile.

 

                                              --- Marcia F. Brown

 

 

Touch, Create

each finger        purpose

each knuckle     strength

vein                   release

artery                 deliver

wrist                  support

Brain                 Master

art                      thought

thought              art

warm, turn, curl, twist, sharp, crystal, cut,

touch                handle

touch                rim

create               ridges,

create               stem,

create               handle,

create               form,

create               style,

create               flow

tender, balance, form, glaze, brush, tone, join

 

           by Vanessa Greeley

The Green Cup

 

The green cup you’ve sent,

coil-built and glazed

by your Indian friend,

sits on a shelf

at the kitchen window.

 

    Practice holding it, you wrote,

as if in its small bowl

I might see the world

you inhabit without me

and understand want differently.

 

Ancient invention for slaking thirst

you fit in my hands like a prayer.

 

                                   ---Kimberly Cloutier Green

 

Red Ochre

 

100,000 times Earth has circled the sun

since the artist knelt with a bone spatula

to stir ochre and marrow fat,

charcoal, quartz grains, and water

into paint in a conch shell bowl.

 

Not in the backbone of the auroch

or the horns cresting proudly from its head

do we recognize ourselves in the cave paintings

of Chauvet, but in the hand that turned their

contours to movement with an upswept arm.

 

Now we can feel, if we cup our palms for water

to fill, the many who came before us

lifting water to their mouths. Now, if we walk

backwards, we can see through the erasures

where we are as it passes away from us.

 

                  ----- Lee Sharkey

 

Imperturbable

 

‘I will buy you a piece of silk

as long as the paring you can peel

from this apple’

 

tells you everything you need to know

about him as a father.

 

The giant sweeps her up and

buries his face in her chest. Te adoro

 

His imperturbable competence.

 

His piano fingers. Half-

moons under the fingernails.

 

Her hands shaped by the keyboard.

Her hands shaping a loaf.

 

Te adoro, father with blue pencils.

 

Silk under the fingertips. She

never for a moment thought

to make a dress of it.

 

           ----- Lee Sharkey

 

 Red Dust

 

                               “The shape nearest shapelessness

                                 awes us most, suggesting the goddess.”

 

Always, she carved the red stone.

This is one thing made me notice.

First, it was a red fish;

then a red bird, a red heron

stalking in red eel grass;

even a red madawaska;

and faces of people she knew,

including her own face red.

I came to know her this way,

as if born of red stone.

Soon, though, she began carving strange things:

red clouds rolling like symphonies

and wind sleeping in red sneakers.

One day the sky went utterly clear,

blue-clear as a door with no door.

She put down her hammer.

You could hear her eyes listening.

That’s when she carved the strangest yet—

things with no names!

She’s covered in the dust of them.

 

                  --Martin Steingesser

 

Copyright © 2002 Martin Steingesser

 

dyestuff

 

candid pigments

   swirl a warmer light

 

she plays and strings

   more freely 

 

gathers and arrays

   unbound skeins

 

crushed and dried

    the bodies yield

 

a dazzling scarlet

   ––cochineal––

 

the scale insect

   sourced from Mexico

 

who spends its life

   attached

 

to one plant only

   by its mouth

 

                    --Leonore Hildebrandt

 

turning to me

 

she calls it human

to contain and hold things

round and curved

 

it takes a sawlog

down-felled timber trunk

the burl’s dark slub that marred a stem

 

a lathe for each year’s

swiveling ring

she cuts and carves––

 

bark-creased roughage

pivots on a solid core

her fingers find the weight

 

base and lip and hollow

paring off parings

nub and rind

 

among the ash-tones

apple cherry elm

she calls it human

 

to work a smooth

coarseness––sand it down

and lightly rub with oil

 

 

                            --Leonore Hildebrandt

 

Episodes in Glass

 

Shards impel.

The pane, unyielding, assumes

its boundaries.

 

He thinks, “I am a flame worker

whose life has ruptured.”

 

Today, tenacious fibers string a lizard

whose tail may easily break. After it cools,

he wipes the surface clean.

 

He dreams of new colors:

warm, supple. “Like honey.

Like lilacs.”

 

Thinner layers harden more quickly,

free-blown in small puffs.

 

            *          *          *

 

He has brought me a vase,

its orbed luster. My left hand

retraces the form, my right

seeks the finish.

 

A face swims in it, eyes

like two opalescent fish.

 

            *          *          *

 

Sand congeals––

the rod, again

cast into fire,

fishes

for molten

beginnings.

 

            *          *          *

 

Folded into liquid, he is a vessel,

a tortoise, a diver among the forms!

Sea fans lace the reef,

pink-puckered stars intertwine.

Free-swimming, he finds

his new face,

its hairline fissures softened

around eye-spheres.

 

            *          *          *

 

Thirsting for heat,

what choice does he have?

A furnace, melting passions.

He gives himself, turns shapeless

white, then orange.

 

Viscous, opaque, urging into form––

a lily, a tilefish, a fixed enumeration

of metals and salts.

 

Coaxed with scissors, his face is burning.

Shards harden in midair,

shatter.

 

He fears he might be the man

who breaks, who falls off

the marble slab.

 

                      --Leonore Hildebrandt