Definition #83 Quenby

Quenby 1975

Poem for Quenby
New Years Eve 2014

Big girl panties
Carry you to greatness:
The family sees
its independent woman
and wants to be just like you when  they grow up.

Big girl capes
Carry you farther than all the ancestors-
Even to the shores of Iceland!
it’s volcanos, starkness, and wool dainties

Big girl feet
Step in places ne’er discovered,
Leave illuminated prints
For cats to follow
For wild fairies to adorn
With moss and loam and musk.

Mom

Earth Song

Between the waters abides the earth…

Earth Song

They call me sod
loam, dirt
clay, turf, dust.

In cahoots with rain, rocks and roots
worms and grubs
perforated by ants and moles
aquifers and oil

veined with lead, copper, gold
and hiding diamonds and coal
cables, wires and pipes

I hold your huts and your tents
your houses and barns
anchor your bridges, apartments and high-rises.

In beds below rivers
lakes and oceans
I slumber.
In the open I bask in sun’s warmth
sprout and nourish your food.

Sometimes I seizure
shudder and quake
vomit magma
belch steam and ash

or slump and ooze
tongues of brown porridge
smothering your villages and roads
in mud.

But mostly I am solid and safe
keeping you upright
with my mysterious magnetic powers.

Feed me wisely
for I ingest
without discrimination

and someday soon
you will join me.
I will reclaim you.
You will again
become mine.
© 2014 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

Inhabiting a Song

Somewhere back of my throat a tune
hovers. My voice or the ghost of my voice
follows, repeating words and weaving
a record of my life into waves and hesitations.

Suppose our chorus, people and animals,
rises and falls in intervals of breath:
in sleep a dog’s paw twitches; a rabbit’s
dream follows its heartbeat all the way
through some ballad that its life is.

Parts of my song disappear, fade out
except for a beat that spans a known
part to another known part, and on.
Even in silence when shadows pass
my throat is full of the sound of the world.

(William Stafford in Crossing Unmarked Snow:

Further Views on the Writer’s Vocation)