Mrs. Smith: as a runner reminisces

" Ed è bel modo rettorico, quando di fuori pare la cosa disabbellirsi, e dentro veramente s'abbellisce." (Dante)

________


Well, without the name how stunningly serene and sweet both Smiths can be
(such as I've met them, drawn to their bells and heat)  

Now there's Smith I see  grown to an infinitesimally cute orchard lot, hips and boots
tramped into mud & her quietly retracting vines,

who's dove-sweet in just that way: as I'd imagined it in one corner of eye. But lovely, too,
 is Smith the portrait and any of her poetical breeds, drawn from brow

to her elegant chin. Again, a lumbering sort of road ahead and she were mated, to me,
as the portrait of any sweetly doughty matron can certainly be--

I'd say, in fact, the Smith I see and that other's sweet doughty pic really can be the same
to the runner who dreams such disparities as these,

but primarily that between a Lady and some imagined mud on the road ahead
_____________________


*Poem inspired by a portrait of Mrs. E.D.Smith which hangs in the Red Carriage House at the Erland Lee estate but dedicated  to the elderly-elegant Mrs.Smith who still resides in her clapboard house beside an abandoned orchard. 

If only she knew..

A Spring verse by Rilke...devastatingly beautiful (to me)

(from "The Seventh Elegy")

No longer, voice. No longer let wooing send forth your cry:
you're past that. Even though your cry would be clear as a bird's
when first Spring bears him aloft, almost forgetting
that he's a cautious creature and not an unsheathed heart
being flung into brightness, in passionate skies.
Like him, with all his art, you'd also woo--: invisibly,
so that some silent mate might learn of you, and,
as she listened, a reply would slowly wake and grow warm--
the kindled complement of your own ardent feeling

Post-Erland Lee poetry (for Jeff Seffinga)

Poetry in the Carriage House

It's been another successful Erland Lee poetry reading. After a two-year change of venue it was good to meet old friends and read poetry again in the red Carriage House. I was particularly moved by the poetry of Jeff Seffinga, editor of Tower Poetry magazine: moved enough to write the following poem (for him)


"On Hearing Jeff say"

that the deer among wolves, quietly sore, a sweet
  Tempe in a savage place can be
   deadly

   But how exactly?

Well (I'd say) like a dirty crushing street-poet deadly
                                                        (poet of letters only!)

  but he'd say, no, like a hand's gentle absence, at dusk;
                                the cat's light wisdom ( dill on its lip):--
                                cat-heart getting lift from itself,
                                                   alone

           Of the poem in a savage place, Jeff'd say

       

Picture taken by Maria DiDiodato

"Morning prayers" (2): helen (of troy)

"good it is for man not to touch a woman"
                                                      (Tertullian)


       It's just like the greying
to execrate filth
  in light,  a woman's walk:

          small mouth and wisps
  trotting forward--

  "Some temple!"

who will try to be reintegrated
  to him under the tree

--"Adulterers won't ever attain"--

unshakeable column
     of
     grey
      reading
        under
         a
          tree

"Love. Leaf. Light." (for John Perlman)

"Tu non se’ in terra"
                          (Dante)


John says the vision narrowed to curtain slits,
                                                               in a city of the sun,
  made the sage and the rose scent one, &

poet who coincides with Leaf and Light  "telically" strung
  once wrote a sun- or plant- or sage-Love:--
                                                                    a Trilogy!

Appearing to John were even a room lone as a world & poet
                                                                on the Village streets,
  -- every situation never good with him --

  swept once into the heart, age-old and without quietude and
                                                                   a pilgrim's peace