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Original Writing

"Do not be decoyed elsewhere:
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves." 
                                    --  Walt Whitman

These two poems, still undergoing revision, were written in an online workshop as exercises in the basic poetic techniques of imagery and the use of metaphor to convey abstractions.

Hummingbird

              In memoriam J.W.S.
               
               
He saw a hummingbird address
a morning-glory
high at the vine's tip.
I watched him study
its stalled body, probing beak,
and wingblur. It may be he pondered 
the energies expended
by that tiny creature
to stay so steady, level
in mid-air. Yet I believe 
that with an expert pilot's
depth-perception
he gazed beyond the bird at skies
clearer than any transparent
wingbeat while he assessed 
his chances on the morrow
for a grassy landing,
               
The surgeons survey his shaved belly,
their black latching of stitches, 
and mark arise-and-walk day
on his chart. He paces, toting
his plastic urine-satchel. Tile
by tile, he trundles his I.V. stand 
forward. Its bottles chink; a needle fangs 
a vein on his bruised hand.
He shrugs my fingers from his elbow.
               
He is stalking on ahead--
O my hunter, your steel-barbed arrows
lean in the locked cabinet
by an unstrung bow. Your skis
lie racked in the attic. You turn
and tell me to remember:
stop by the kennel, walk those hounds.
Anywhere, hummingbirds instantly
bring this all back to me.

A nurse settles him in bed,
rehooks bottles and the blood-dark bag.
Green drops of morphine, a shot for clots.
Drowsy, he talks of fresh challenges;
come fall, he'll take up hang-gliding.
               
Which is why I took the ashes 
up the mountain and the north wind 
swirled them all away 
to dart and swoop and hover,
invisible above the grass.

© N.E.Phillips, 2003

Dementia

The forest does not slump at once to swamp,
diseased, rot in heat and lymph seeps,
or crumble, shot by lightning, to burnt deadfall.
Its tough roots still grope, burrow
to a shrinking water-table;
its spindly twigs unclench small leaves.
               
But mudclots throttle the slow streams;
black nightshade berries bloat; a rash
of fungus-splotch mottles the treebark.
Frayed puffballs dangle their dry spores 
in dusty sunshafts. While the speckled owl
snuffles in sleep, whole timber-years
fade blurred on the stump rings.
Then birdcall stutters in the branches;
the leafmash muffles the stumble
of wolfpaw and boarhoof.
               
Sometimes the old king of the copse
strays blinking on the outskirts
and random sungleam sparks
a flash from his dulled jewels.
All our darktower heroes, vowed
to fetch him forth, report a haze,
a spiderprowl of twisty trail 
through thicket and mossweb
where the compass needle wobbles
awry, and no one there.

© N.E.Phillips, 2003

For more workshopped poems, please link here.

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