If it didn’t matter, I would live
in the moment the horseless carriage freed the horse,
in air where you can smell the carrots when you pull them,
in that roar and flash of beaten heat
when every drop like iron is Thor’s hammer
bouncing back from a river’s sheen,
or in the nonce when a pianist stumbled, his fingers tangled,
but improvised as if his difficult passage were meant
to go partway up, pause for our gasps,
and then in perfect time, summit.
It does matter that rivers still feather and weave infinite forms.
It matters, too, that they all end like us, with open mouths.
And it matters more that here below us, this river
flows, and high on the tilting ledges it has carved, conifers
in greens hold tight and shelter all the gold that didn’t burn.
Most of all, it’s finally cool, the weather
damp as evening finds our rented house with creaking floors. We’re
almost home. The rain’s outside. An ample table’s in. There’s steaming
home-cooked food. There’s laughter. And at last—for now—we’re together.
.
A Sentence Ending with Instead
— after Tomaž Šalamun
The history
of the growth of heaven
is a long runny sentence
in each dawn’s mouth to mouth
each waking creature’s mirrored yawn
each creaking tree’s light show
as wind wrestles sun
and wins sometimes when dawn
turns cold and dull, a flat white
undercoat with us under it,
yet birds applaud light’s climb
over every moving mossy branch
up every kind of green you love
and through our kitchen window
now flashing beads of dew
to play on our own wall and then
our door, to warm its hand-worn wood
like warmth that grows in voices
when directors’ tears flow
warmth that lifts our dust showing
just how light we’re growing, sparkling even,
and how small our worries, aches, ourselves
disappearing in that floaty way
that people sometimes go
looking down on outgrown dread,
convincing pain, bodies too, not breathing
but shedding lively sparks instead.
.
We
In a schmoozing crowd — fizz of ultra-bright
colors in thin mountain air — cheers
with clinked plastic — buzz — taking off, taking leave —
quaking leaves making fly-catching hummingbirds swirl —
that evening so light — so sheer — words
could gain weight, each gesture a statue,
and a first-person pronoun turned plural could blow
paired crescendos through the indifferent crowd. Such
a common word that its stretching fibrils could fly invisible,
buoyant as a joke, for miles. For years.
.
Muriel Nelson’s publications include Sightsinger (Encircle Publications) and Part Song (Bear Star Press, Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize), and two chapbooks, Please Hold (Encircle Publications, Poetry Chapbook Award) and Most Wanted (ByLine Press, ByLine Chapbook Award). Nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize, Nelson’s poems have appeared in Guesthouse, Hunger Mountain, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, and other journals as well as in several anthologies. Two of her poems have been set to music. She holds master’s degrees from the University of Illinois School of Music and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and lives in Federal Way, Washington. The Encircle publications can be found here: https://encirclepub.com/product/sightsinger/
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 