poems by Jennifer Cahill

The Warble

 

The warble,

round like the earth and its sky,

land colors

 

of flour-

soft feathers, sits with its peers.

The blue hills,

 

a sea-tinted

elliptic shape against Spring’s

sun-lit edge

 

is a harbor

for the winged creatures, amongst

a budding

 

tree, windy

caress of grass, the sandy

dirt of foot-

 

prints. A stream

gushes downwards, its silver drops

crest like waves,

 

the multi-

tinctures of the stones under

the silken

 

glassiness

are a congregation. The bird

flies away.

 

 

 

Submerged

 

A bottle slightly submerged in the Sea

has within its light glass a scrap of paper-

 

on which are the words

“Do you know me?”

 

“I am on other shores, perhaps

exactly opposite Yours.”

 

The orange deep red-brown

of the hovering sun color the ripples-

 

like the wrinkles of a silk slip-

a dusky effulgence of an evening.

 

The sun’s searing white-yellow

seen through the glass is a slightly

 

undercooked yolk, seeping

and spreading through the enveloping visceral

white-

 

the solitary thin cloud passing the Sun’s

fire. The sunlight is the gleam on the vessel,

 

under a Mayan Sky..

 

flushed with their Belief. Faith…of an ocean

that covers the entire Earth; tranquil,

 

at peace for eons; before the Mayan “Heart of Sky” that drapes Earth’s mottled tints,

 

creates the creatures- crawling, rising

to stand, walk on the newly born lands.

 

 

 

An Upright Piano

 

The aging piano sits upright.

A rocking chair is broken while being built.

But the cherry wood rocker is untarnished,

and the song lessons, exercises, are played.

 

The tenements’ trims are freshly painted, every Summer. Blue, but not the new blue

pigment just developed, in a Lab. An Isle of Capri color, perhaps, bled from the elements, particles.

 

The speed and splitting of photons.

 

Perhaps a cloudless Autumn sky,

or the hue of a Robin’s egg; a light blue carnation, so light the expectation

 

of the Spring-Dance will spread wings,

perhaps UNCLIP the WINGS of the CAGED BIRD.

 

This tree, adjacent to the balcony reaches its arms towards the heavens..maybe to the top layer that needs a fire to penetrate, to view a

blue Earth like we see the moon, the Earth a little darker than cold Uranus.

In Winter, the fingers of the tree bear dried wrinkled berries, picked in futility by the sparrow. The sparrows’ brown wings are the color of a long ago restful brook,

 

from which a bent night -colored stick rose up against the bank:

 

this missal tinted alligator- he spares bi-ped shades of dusk.

 

Winter’s chaste, air, that breathes inspiration.. maybe to pull on a sweater. Or turn up the heat. It’s 76 degrees in the pale yellow- green painted room, with a rug the fertile shade of soil.

 

A 5 month old kitten’s vomit is the same colors. And her toys, they warm the room,

they boast of activity. They, with the kitten,

are the missing sunshine.

 

All year, except in early Summer when the evening will sift the sun through the branches to splash the living room wall with a brighter gold-dandelion hues- there is no sunshine in the apartment.

THIS evening, the light of another apartment almost mirrors the buttercup clouds that are smudged against a January edge. The light of the home is darker, like an egg yolk’s hue is deeper than the Sunlight.

 

The shoelaces untie,

and they’ve been caught by the kitten’s eye.

 

She touches, hesitantly, with her paw,

the lace that rests long on the slope, raw,

 

to the cool breeze of Mid-January;

next to a window that reveals a sanctuary.

 

The sun dresses the top limbs of a tree; its lower bare curves are the hue of a cocktail skirt, with a ripped seam,

 

that is halfway in the woven bamboo hamper;

that was worn by the church- less Cantor..

 

and the pine needles

that poke the evening..

 

they, in sun-light, had the tint of the Sea.

The splashed rocks with moss, pear green;

 

an inanimate congregation,

that watch with a quiet contemplation

 

a late Sunday Shore.

Now, within Her ROOM there is more..

 

the clutter of a confident craziness

on a wooden scratched glossiness,

 

upon which belligerently rest, near the kitten’s maw,

the chewed 1% spandex blouse, and rubicund bra-

 

they are a tossed sunset over the edge. Of Mayan Skies..

mountainous thrusts; Dusk’s sleepy eyes.

 

The books that have begun to be read,

are upon the charcoal foam of a bed.

 

This portrait is etched within the walls the hue of yellow skin,

exhaustively painted again and again, and again.

poems by Jennifer Cahill

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