clouds store my sun away

when clouds store my sun away
behind high restlessness…and chill
sweeps vexation through my green intent
of tender blading hills and fields,
I turn to settling of accounts remaining
here upon the desking of my days

for I owe myself more now than anytime…
I brush away the bees…plate honeycomb
upon the wedding Sevres…break sweet gold
to my mouth with a family sterling spoon
new polished…bloom Chinese silver needle
tea-leaves bundled ‘round a pink carnation
special occasion…guarded by a golden dragon
coiled imperial on the red of its rusting tin

I shall bask upon my porch and breathe brewed
fragrance with astringent ozone of approaching storm
for I am wrapped in complex luxury of a precious time

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Richard Diebenkorn

In Living Color

He…rotates hours in tractor green
rust red…bruise purple…cow black,
and slogs mud brown to harvest gold;
he stretches days to months of acre
farmland distance smudged to dusty
lilac edged pale orange to sunset.

She…stacks rainbow cotton into strata
on her closet shelves… pink yellow rose
denim blue…and she turns flower print
calico to fat quarters for quilts’ necessity;
she cuts pale pastel lengths for day clothes,
crisp white curtains for their bedroom,
layette laces, a black mourning shift.

They…jar garden colors…inter them dated
deep to cellar racks…their summer bounty
of intense prairie heat…tomato bean beet
corn plum dimmed…cooled in basement
gloom until kitchen resurrected to the
palette of their plates…for lives lived
cumulus against a cloud fog mist canvas
of blue white graying years.

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Conroy Maddox

The Women Descants

After Her Divorce

After her divorce…
she lived with paintings
rented month to month…
much like borrowed books
or casual acquaintance.
She bought flowers freshly cut,
not plants…for she would stay
distant from commitment.

Leased one vaguely abstract
yellow peach green blue
March to June…still with
no long-term contract,
and no binding promise…
she placed it on a bedroom
wall to cover gouges there.

March…day and day after,
all seeming arbitrary,
drew her in the night to
Rorschach introspection
of that painting’s certitude,

until one April morning
when sunshine lit it golden…
she sensed tumblers fall
within assurance locks.

She patched the bedroom wall in May,
moved that painting to her den
to hang it where it would not fade.
In June she bought the thing.

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Maeve Harris

 

not graffiti prone

handprints on fresh paint
impetuous gesture
my handprints on fresh paint…
why not use aerosol
to claim that wall…
then I reflect
that women are not
graffiti prone

where is their fire
to cast life drawn large
across imagined space
like Michelangelo’s
naked…sacred homilies
scraped and frescoed
on a Sistine dome

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by banksy

 A Wilderness in Women

I’m old…
I can tell you this.
Women need wilderness
…especially when they’re young.
For in wilderness they learn
not to trust worn maps;
and to swim cold streams
when bridges are down.

In wilderness…
they hear honest sounds,
know when nestlings cry
for raw, sustaining flesh
they’re healthy calls,
…not the noise of whining.
And on the day they die,
women raised in wilderness
whisper remembered songs
to take them from this world
to the next.

Bonnie Marshall
Revised September, 2013

Artwork by Balthasar Denner

Down from the Pedestal

Grief showers
chilled her
to immobility
there in the middle
of a crowded city sidewalk.
I’m lost without him.
Don’t know where I’m going.

No medical emergency,
it was a sorrow spell
where street sounds
turned to hissing
a static in the senses.
I cannot move…
I’m statue…

Now, for this living Galatea
there was no longer
a Pygmalion
to smooth her into life
with his strong, warm hands.
Is this what dying is?
Am I invisible?

“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, LADY!”

The rough jostle
shook her mind
back to awareness,
and city sounds and colors
merged to coherency.

She resumed walking.
Steps…just steps.
I’m taking steps…
down from the pedestal.

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Childe Hassam

Ancient Wind Chant

Old Hopi lies prostrate upon a deep-red sandstone mesa,
while under him the ground remembers noontime heat.
His rib cage barely lifts with narrow breaths of chanting.
His voice is hushed and reedy.
Ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po.*

As his words become more halting, raven caws.
He and raven are old friends.
He kneels, and with trembling fingers
sifts two-million-year old sand into a gentle breeze.
Ai-na, ki-na-weh, ki-na-weh

He feels sensations of his body are not balanced.
Vistas of escarpment, of river and of mesa
swirl slightly in his sight.
In his shaman’s pouch is honeycomb
wrapped in a beaded bag.
He lifts it toward the sky as if in offering.
Chi-li-li-cha, chi-li-li-cha.

Honey is precious in the homeland of the Hopi.
Its dense fragrance hints of amaranth and clover.
Its syrup glows deep gold in bright sunlight.
Blessed, healing sweetness.
Don-ka-va-ki, mas-i-ki-va-ki.

There is presence in the wind now.
It has voice and stealthy movement.
There before him a dust devil
swerves and dances with abandon
then dissolves into oblivion.
Kive, kive-na-meh.

Lavender mesas turn magenta and dark sapphire.
Old Hopi is not sensitive to day turned into night.
He dances…swerving, turning…
’round the flaming of his campfire,
a silhouette upon the face of cliff side petroglyphs.
HOPET.

Bonnie Marshall
Republished from December, 2013

* The ancient Hopi words of this chant have lost their English equivalent.

Photo Credit: Imageshack

On the Cusp

On the Cusp

Deep…deep beneath Dad’s land
and still cooling from beginnings,
tectonic plates expand…subduct…
slip slide with incremental tension,
slight tremors on a Richter scale…
yet not enough for red ants
in his woods beyond the barn
to swarm out from their mounds,
nor for his canary in the kitchen
to bash its feathered body
against the metal cage.
He knows those warnings
to move horses from the stable.

Lately, we’ve all noticed
he doesn’t pay much mind
to TV news and such…
only reads the local paper
and books from the living room…
like the Bible and Farmer’s Almanac
and plays here and there by Shakespeare.
He spends more time out on the porch,
and senses weather changes
even before the metal rooster
on the old barn arcs from east to west,
and notes balances tipping
like horizon sun flash…on the cusp
just before the set.

Bonnie Marshall