Decades before I knew to name poetica - or myself poet - I swooned countless hours in birch shade steeped in perfumed sweetness from modest blooms arced over me - moss-cushioned, prone - acquiescing to slight breeze as, it seemed, to me their dizzying scent wafting the young air of spring transports me back to childhood, an ease I now know to name swb 5.23
There are times when a confluence of events, feelings, opportunity and phrases conspire to connect, perhaps in conversation to create an entirely new form of expression or possibility. This has happened to me while working with a piece of stone. It has happened when a poem comes full-blown to the page. And sometimes, as recently, it happens unbidden. Starts as a niggle at the edge of consciousness. Morphs about inside, noting and absorbing layers and dimensions. Spillls onto the page this way, then that. Finally challenges me to approach it intentionally. As, in the case of the brief poem below, even experimentally.
I welcome your comments and observations, curious what you glean from the words, their arrangement, any possible resonance for you personally. And thank you for reading.
REBIRTH
AT THE NEW MOON
for DC
This harbinger
this black zero of beginning
releases hope
hollow, hungering
to expand, to deepen
to become full. The new wanting
to bid old ways goodbye
beckons to push through
a second chance to fill
this opening.
Start close up, sense
the gift of a new phase
a whisper undiscerned
on the dawn’s breeze,
a seed in you
waiting to spread against a future sky
become visible while carrying
the light within
your gift to others
It is early, and about to grow.
This is my first experiment with a double-poem-that-makes-a-third. 'At the New Moon' is 'found' from Marge Piercy's ‘Head of the Year.' 'Rebirth' celebrates a turning in DC's life.
image 
The morning, chill and gray, turned me inward seeking warmth, some reassurance that winter is still a few months at bay. After the requisite morning walk, my pup settled on the deck for breakfast and bunny-watch, my eyes wandered beyond the railing to see three tall hydrangea blooms in full autumn blaze – every shade of deep purple, lavender, violet - the dark to light blues of an entire summer rising tall above the bush’s rough-edged green leaves marooning already in the cooling nights of just-October. As is my custom to keep fresh flowers on the table, I harvested these late season blues bringing all their hues of experience and hope to my view within, up close and reassuring. swb
How we all love to pick apples, sink expectant teeth into unsuspecting flesh that spews sweet spray onto one another’s faces the crunch a clarion call - and come they do! How my boy, not yet two, would grab and gnaw his little white teeth across the red surface, sink slowly into the sweetness hiding there to his eye-widening delight; and how I imagine him slinging his own baby boy across his slim back reaching the same long arms for one, then another, testing four teeth against the slippery skin and likely dropping it before he gains traction enough for a true taste. What is it about fall that brings a grown daughter home every year to climb a tree, snap a few selfies and slide more than a few luscious bites of Macintosh, Macoun and Cortland into her waiting mouth? To the other, I mail packages packed with care to preserve a pair of Mac’s and a jar of jam. Already I have stewed and frozen vats of Macinsauce, simmered pints of golden brown apple butter, baked muffins and pie and crisp and crumble, all this New England fare of yore begging for more. How grateful I for the crunch of each fall afresh with plucking and picking up what fell from weight or wind, as I fall into delirium with each delicious bite. swb Photos by Jim Hester, Fall 1990. Both are slides; the second is a phone capture from slide - clumsy technology but a favorite shot.
Risen already, her pink orb
lifting through baby blue,
watery train not yet visible
in the still-waning light.
Incoming surf seeking to bring
along her offshore shimmer
just emerging between
rock outcrop and shore.
The western sky phasing
into slow haze, stubbornly
pale as if in deference
to this harvest moon’s
regal rise, her steady climb
and steadfast reliability a comfort
in our increasingly erratic
world.
swb
9.9.22
sarahscapes 