Issue Twelve
Poetry: by Karen Lee Lewis
There is something to be said / for frugality in language...
POETRY by Karen L. Lewis
TUNNEL MOUNTAIN
Banff, Alberta, 2007
Train whistles in French
horn across the valley
Between you and I flies
an iridescent magpie
Reaching for the Bow’s release
bones of bedrock fortify
mineral river lichen shivers
percussive pebbles murmur
flats and sharps whisper
chenille and corduroy
Shore lies drawing
on its memories
silent remnants
reflection the surface of
a tall peninsula
ready to swallow this stone
scribe whole
Between these lines of earth
scorching conduits fire
cataclysm channel avalanche channel
glacial crust scouring centuries
of slide and grind
that settle for the foot
of elk, coyote, deer and goat
The world is full of edges
some jagged some round
What is the difference
between subservience and reverence?
Gravity’s knees are scraped regardless
crawling blind toward belief
Better to be a lodestone
of the sea listening
to the shape of water
and its promises to carry me
in its currents
Better to be ice
threatening relief over flow
Better to be dissolved slowly
and pulled into dangling
roots of Douglas Fir
Mouthed earth devours
scars reveal what
time conceals
When the time comes
for me to rise like mountains
I cannot hide myself in skin
When the time comes clouds
will drip into my mouth
I will hold my hands like pockets
life’s blood will pine away years
recycling all kinds of green
When the time comes for trembling
aspen to bury themselves in sun
I will pack my spine with resolve
and the sheer veneer of days
I will not be able to grasp
how my self moves outward in all directions
When the time comes for me to grow bolder
to walk with a forest’s sense of altitude
my eyes will turn to water
dutifully cleansing for the sights that follow
a small price to pay to breath this air
My dreams a series of prefix reveal
I am always beginning
WHAT SOUND
There is something to be said
for frugality in language.
How many sounds
do we really need
to mate for life?
What sound for follow?
For love that crosses
the long passage
between two bodies?
For a pair of Canada geese
the resonance of relationship
is told in a story of thirteen sounds.
Some think thirteen unlucky
yet the number unites
one’s duality with three’s divine grace.
What sound would you choose
for contentment? What sound
embraces child? Can you
imagine a different sound for laughter?
What about something foul,
the way stress makes a goose hiss
displeasure—her long neck
more snake than throat.
What sound for the endless
calling you’ll make
when one day you lose
your mate?
So much to be said—
in stead the body’s language
can attend to silence moving
moments that manifest
true partnership.
Geese often bow their heads
in a gesture resembling namaste—
I recognize the universe
within you.
In Thailand they pronounce
this motion
Why;
one small syllable
can make
a world.
TUNNEL MOUNTAIN
Banff, Alberta, 2007
Train whistles in French
horn across the valley
Between you and I flies
an iridescent magpie
Reaching for the Bow’s release
bones of bedrock fortify
mineral river lichen shivers
percussive pebbles murmur
flats and sharps whisper
chenille and corduroy
Shore lies drawing
on its memories
silent remnants
reflection the surface of
a tall peninsula
ready to swallow this stone
scribe whole
Between these lines of earth
scorching conduits fire
cataclysm channel avalanche channel
glacial crust scouring centuries
of slide and grind
that settle for the foot
of elk, coyote, deer and goat
The world is full of edges
some jagged some round
What is the difference
between subservience and reverence?
Gravity’s knees are scraped regardless
crawling blind toward belief
Better to be a lodestone
of the sea listening
to the shape of water
and its promises to carry me
in its currents
Better to be ice
threatening relief over flow
Better to be dissolved slowly
and pulled into dangling
roots of Douglas Fir
Mouthed earth devours
scars reveal what
time conceals
When the time comes
for me to rise like mountains
I cannot hide myself in skin
When the time comes clouds
will drip into my mouth
I will hold my hands like pockets
life’s blood will pine away years
recycling all kinds of green
When the time comes for trembling
aspen to bury themselves in sun
I will pack my spine with resolve
and the sheer veneer of days
I will not be able to grasp
how my self moves outward in all directions
When the time comes for me to grow bolder
to walk with a forest’s sense of altitude
my eyes will turn to water
dutifully cleansing for the sights that follow
a small price to pay to breath this air
My dreams a series of prefix reveal
I am always beginning
WHAT SOUND
There is something to be said
for frugality in language.
How many sounds
do we really need
to mate for life?
What sound for follow?
For love that crosses
the long passage
between two bodies?
For a pair of Canada geese
the resonance of relationship
is told in a story of thirteen sounds.
Some think thirteen unlucky
yet the number unites
one’s duality with three’s divine grace.
What sound would you choose
for contentment? What sound
embraces child? Can you
imagine a different sound for laughter?
What about something foul,
the way stress makes a goose hiss
displeasure—her long neck
more snake than throat.
What sound for the endless
calling you’ll make
when one day you lose
your mate?
So much to be said—
in stead the body’s language
can attend to silence moving
moments that manifest
true partnership.
Geese often bow their heads
in a gesture resembling namaste—
I recognize the universe
within you.
In Thailand they pronounce
this motion
Why;
one small syllable
can make
a world.