trust is a learned thing:
that something so big
can name, can love, can nurture
one this small
dry tears with a kiss
& stitch together a torn heart
with a smile
it is known by infants
as something real, expressed
in arms that rock gently
& hands that feed
our first prayer simply us
lifting up our own arms,
asking wordlessly to be held
I will bet this life
Jeanne d’Arc heard voices
and so do I: Not angels
or other spirits,
but voices of women called witches
or even saints
after their ashes cool.
But she, and they
were silenced, and the murmurs I hear
are of the dead,
and they are faint whispers
and stories suggested
and never seen.
I will speak for them
as they have no breath left:
In my burning,
I am the woman whose tongue turns flame,
who cannot know silence:
To know if a woman
was a witch or not,
they dragged her
into deep water;
and the weight of her clothes
and her innocence
pushed her under, into
forever silence.
Still,
if she floated somehow,
came up choking
and hungry for air,
then she was a witch
who deserved burning.
More likely than not,
she was a woman
who loved God, but
who once spoke her truth,
or looked at another woman
sideways in anger,
or smiled at the wrong man.
Not I,
if I were so accused
as innocent as I am of magic,
upon my burning
I would be the woman
whose burning
becomes spectacular,
who later dances incandescent
on the ceilings
of my judges’ houses;
come to take what I can
from the men who burned me
and then had the nerve to sleep soundly.
I would walk in dreams naked,
long of tooth, red-eyed,
stealing blood and semen.
**** Here is what I could reconstruct of that damned lost poem. Don’t know if I recalled all of it, but the voice sounds about right.
By Noel Ihebuzor and Susan L. Daniels
Noel:
Throats, though they may parch, never rust,
wells never really run dry,
below the dry beds arteries of spring,
sleep, rustle and wait to sing
all wait the call of the season,
the internal stirring,
the stimulus outside, a connection
then the dam bursts
subterranean waters surge forward
liberate the messenger, the medium
the surging song both release and reward,
reward for the seed carried and faith kept.
Susan:
If inspiration is a spring filling our wells
with new sweetness, let us drink from them.
Let words somersault and cartwheel from us
frolicking, yes, let them play;
but swift and dangerous as the rapids of Niagara;
and, like Niagara, let these songs pour into us
and through us, and from us
with the strength of one great lake
falling into another, heedless of the drop.
Any song that rises from a seed nourished from waters like these,
and tended by our constant certainty
should flower quickly into being, unfiltered and joyous.
Noel:
If sleep is a fallow period, then let us lay still
ideas steal and sneak past our shut eyelids
meander into our beings
waltz with ideas and songs that sleep within us, unknown, such that
rising to a new day, wakes them up
Let us hope that rising will raise the shutters
open awakenings,
awaken seeds that lie drowsy
drugged with sleep
ideas with roots groping for soil,
waiting for space to dance
A place to anchor,
anchor to grow and glow,
DNA of growth
etched indelibly in the seed,
even in dormancy,
and soon in time and with time
the seed sprouts
hungry groping roots push into
the unbonding receptacle of mother earth,
nourishing, warming,
causing a stem to elongate,
a trunk warms up,
walks on the invisible staircase of the air
weaves its way upwards, skywards, proud
reaching out to embrace the open skies,
flowers singing beautiful and soon to seed again
and scatter new seeds,
which though silent now
will one day each burst
to announce a new season of planting,
of birth, of becoming after a season of rest
a hibernation that worries but which
restores, refreshes and renews
in the creator’s creative cycle of creativity.
Susan:
After dreaming, my eyelids open to flesh resounding
like a clapped bell calling the hour, my mouth opening eagerly
to incorporate air to feed the fire singing in blood, in bones;
that first deep-drawn breath before our song rises
from the belly, past lips and takes flight.
We call this process of writing inspiration,
but it is the art of both taking in
and pouring out. Let us call this cycle waiting within us
and moving through us simply breathing; incorporation
and expression too closely linked
to ever separate.
***Here, Noel sings and I plod, but still very happy to be along for the ride 🙂
I would put up signs
asking for your return
but you were not lovable;
an angry poem
full of disturbing beauty
I wrote when I was 22
& somehow
you slipped from that folder
& out an open window
while I wasn’t watching.
I hope you found
a wonderful new home,
but, I am afraid what happens
to feral, unfriendly strays
that hiss, scratch, & spit
has happened to you
& you were euthanized
far more gently
than you deserved.
because I and you
melt & diffuse
into an us
of limitless joy
#1: Fire
Because fire warms
& is the strength of the sun
that ultimately nurtures everything,
if relationships are elemental,
then love is best expressed
as fire
& must be fed,
even as it feeds us.
#2: Earth
Matrix of all living,
she is the dust rolled into
the shape of the first man
& the holder of his bones
but, remember this:
she, who spins so subtly
beneath our feet
& holds us fast to her breast
in an invisible embrace
of infinite tolerance
is in reality a sleeping giant
who, with one unthinking shrug
can level cities
#3: Air
This, the exhalation of our planet
stroking skin
& playing games
with hair
arcing above us
unspeakably blue
& beyond any touching,
can also swaddle us in the softest cotton
or give us glimpses
of an endless night
punctuated with clusters
of burning suns.
This breath that gives life
can, in a deeper sigh
of exasperation,
twist into tornadoes
& hurricanes,
shift from substrate
to menace
in an instant.
4: Water
Water returns to water.
atoms rearrange,
moving above & through
the ground we stand on,
falling gently on upturned faces
& leaves, steam or fog
flowing from the earth
on nights when the air
is colder than the soil
it rests its cheek upon;
these same currents
stream through our bodies
beneath skin,
as within us
the same cycle repeats:
water returns to water,
atoms rearrange.
****I decided to combine all 4 short poems into 1 longer poem, composed of 4 parts that can stand equally on their own. Hope you like!
the air in this room
carries a charge–
I can smell your anger
like ozone rolling
before a thunderstorm,
back straight,
shoulders square,
I am ready for that first flash,
hotter than the surface of the sun
to strike its polar opposite
the second
our eyes meet
Susan Daniels Poetry 