Kell Verses

 Kell verses

      (for Katherine Gordon)

She sits in her stone seat,

  beside two tractor wheels,

musing, the jug beneath her feet,

  earth of clay at her heels—

dear Kate, prophetess of rivers,

  who sends me lone breezes!

When day dies, giving sick slivers

  of light, and night freezes,

Kate, Celtic seer after the wren,

  with jade shell for an eye,

and fox that shies towards its den—

  she peers across the sky

til she finds, ript from its deep sea,

  sea-splendid, one true star—

rich as earth, and blazing at me,

  my Kate with one true star!

And far up as her dry river bed

  and down the blue heather,

(dead tractor by a lean-to shed!)

  we see it, together

our lush spectral star. And the way

  it fires her paisley shawl

Kate's soft shawl , and breaks like a spray

  of daisies along her wall,

not far from the jug and stone seat.

  Alone beside the wheel,

half-hid in daisies at her feet,

  sadly, she starts to feel

her Celtic night shake loose like leaves,

  caught in a morning gale

Mystic wren that sings in the breeze

  has star-shells for a tail

  ©Conrad DiDiodato 2008

A Sexton poem

Every poem's  like that in Sexton's cute smirk
   
 or the two lips pressed to the filter
   
or a hand draped over the only knee left to her
   


 
   

Titi

As a long-gowned leggy dancing master knows,
  "It's Titi and sweet-both,"

smirking, quick to say to dancing girls all in a row.
   But Titi, grown to stray far

has gone too far so that her lord's slender and
    near, saying "Americans

like their virgins!"and meaning every word of it--
   She's not in her quartier.

"All around and through each one of us," she
   admits, "is a type of dance

that will look dear to dancing girls all in a row"
   "Very much!" was his reply
 


 
 

My goodbye to the neighbour's cat

With milk on the chin and feathery lip,
  (uncoiling, to show you)
she mews, & rises misty-nosed, too
  because you'd like
  to say bye

But she turns the tension into a nap,
  into a very 'O':
so I can bear easily the milk on her lip,
  (coiling, to show me)
  when I go

Gary

(1954-1980)

The grass blown over your eyes,

  I saw, soul-shrivelled

in wind, wet in an early Spring,

  an absent heart

(were it just grass borders taking

  you in!),

 and even a

  slight form of a daughterless dad

(were it just in the way the next

  stone took you out),

  & a very wet sunken place

( Gary , not a tree around for

  you either!)

With some watchful sweeping, alone

  alone all the time, I

saw the step, smile & the veiny brow

  returned,

and very shapeless under my

  feet  a

few leaves yet to brush from the eyes,

                              old friend

Gertrude

When it's out of your hands,  and the cute curled face
   of the cat-saint takes one in hers,

look on a bit & wait. The two or three others, breathless
  and tight-lipped (those cats of hers!)

she won't embrace because they are beyond Nevelles fields,
  and beyond me every bit as much--

these, --I pray !--be always yesterday's poor  inexistent
  twitching under her heat

Tabby

She's etched in snow-decal like the panther cousin; and

  lost in a broken field, like the plumehunter

Devislish with fur's soft-fire, foxed,
  hourly, in even bouts a cat walks out of her rubble-lair to
taste yardbrush and its  fancy dish

Tabby's part chisel-toothed, part tiger tongs
  with eye-grease
(fecund feet mounting on rocks)

  A faint brocade beautifully grains evenly at the throat,
the very softness a symbol
  from round  the nape and down the central arch--

the cushy patron-saint of the somnambulist!

  If ticklish as a mushroom's dewy underbelly
she's also watchful as an ear of the sea

  She's also marathon-prowler

because with all the momentary glaring sun-reveille,
  transparent grass mists
and footfalls seen across a frictionless,crabbed yard,
  we can hardly spot her at all

clawing on the oak with tusky prescience

  Rains can't wither tails nor alone a tabby's puff-cheeks,
powdery ear, cute crystal-moth nose, too

  And if she's more shrimper than man-eater,
more a whiskery fandango, majorette, than sacred pelf matted
  with odd street-gore--
still for all that the cat prefers guttling prey to just meanly
  boring through

  Tabby's still all egress, a pure window on the world,
assailed by nothing so much as a light rain

  and with feathers in the mouth looks like nothing so
much as some celestial mouser, nestbugger,
  eyes two starry flea-wings,

  gums of moist cooked cheese.