POETRY BY B.A. ST. ANDREWS
OPENING THE SUMMER HOUSE
Sun-drenched again and
one
with the universe I am
sweeping this kitchen, singing
at the top and bottom of
essentially tuneless lungs.
On the porch I contemplate
a cormorant precariously balanced
atop sails, wings outstretched
frail as a purple Jesus
steadying for nails.
Being neither bird nor
sacred
boy, I tremble in joy if not
redemption and scrub down
doomsday thoughts and dogmas
of denial. For a precious fortnight
sin itself is not on trial.
In
beguiling heat I perceive myself
a Deity and so decree; humans
need atone for nothing. Cardinal
hatted hollyhocks agree.
My life plies with waves
that
leap like ballerinas on a jetty,
spinning diaphanous skirts of
foam. Gull, cod, cloud, plover:
every thing dances or hovers.
Crescendo, decrescendo,
Triton
blasts sea-symphonies on
stone. Sunbeams clap topaz
hands while girls plant shells
like dreams in amber sand.
I am planting, too. Come
high tide and harvest moon,
Love itself may slide
inside my cave of dreams,
mystic and wild as a silkie.
Alive with light I am
pounded thin as a compact disc
by sound; a silver filament
I am, humming in August heat,
a one woman network of
good news. All my lines
are
open. When I take to airwaves,
Mother Nature has Her say.
Pipers promise "Yes!"
South winds murmur "Stay!"
B.A.
St.Andrews, with poems published in The Paris Review, Carolina
Quarterly, Jama, and The Gettysburg Review, teaches
at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities in Syracuse. New poems
will appear in a collection entitled The Last Farmhouse of Feeling.
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