close as Venice

and if shores wash orange with sea change
and flamingos wade a pink foamed beach
and meridians slip north and south…where
ice islands…harmless…circle earth cool clear
cubes of iridescence

and people sing to each other close like Venice
and hand-write words to paper…slips pinned
to color coded windows…walls and doors shaded
for degrees of dark despair…and lightened for
the bloom of promises…and hope

we shall become a silent movie stuff of need
to tell and touch with bonds direct..profound and
strange as emerald studded starfish on the sands
and oysters hatching diamonds in our hands

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Kolmon Moser
Draft for a Metal Relief, 1904

to congregate with maskers

I shall congregate with maskers
circle dance their holy ground…
lift its soft warm dust to clouding
with my bare…bare tender feet

ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po
ai-na, ki-na-wchi, ki-na-weh

take up chants…petition spirit
croon a cadence rise and fall…
imbrue thought…and bear the
weight of a vast imagining

chi-li-li-cha, chi-li-li-cha
don-ka-va-ki, mas-i-ki-va-ki

stretch my arms to the horizon
caress air with open palms…
shoulder weave above the plaining
and think locus to the earth

kive, kive-na-meh, kive-na-meh
kive, kive-na-meh, kive-na-meh

for I’ve access…if I wish it
to a universal voice…I’ll overlay
significance…I’ll imagine wisdom
in its ancient keening howl or…
its whispering syllables

ki-tana-po, ki-tana-po, hopet*

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by John Farnsworth

“Apache Mountain Spirit Mask

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

 

ancient in me is a Viking nature

ancient in me is a Viking nature
its chords are in the sinews of my hand
a brief tendency to claw I tender touch
a raw inheritance…a boon to thought

for days when breeze is from the north
I am drawn to roughness and to vagrancy
I know the urgency of sail with sea wind
bass keel push…moaning of the hull

then it is I exit through low windows
choose rain pooled muddy trails
gnaw on wintergreen and sorrel
climb mulberry…cram fulsome to
my mouth its sour sweet stain

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Nicholas Roerich

dreaming flamingos

I’m New England woman in my mind,
a transcendental eyeball on a hill…
I’m hiking boots pacer in gray wool
sweater under layered against itch

I’m gazer at dewed spider webs,
I’m sheltered…early in a box house
of sunsilvered windblown pine

and…I dream about flamingos
pin Geographic glossies inside
my kitchen cupboard door…where
I store white cups and plates and bowls

and… I think about the hearing of
their raucous squawking in flame pink
beauty pools…and I smile to think
they synchronize direction in a gawky
urgent mating dance…there in Africa,
Peru…Belize…Galapagos…and…and
the Caribbean…in narrow arrow flight,
flower washed rose carnation amaranth

now…I gaze at tropic embers in my hearth
glimmering…resin sputters in gray ash
and I boil live lobsters in a cooking pot
and listen for their tiny scream

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by John Audubon
“Flamingo and Roseate Spoonbill”

prophecy slipped through

 

prophecy slipped through
open windows…born on a
west-wind  fragrance of pale
ocean to agitate her white
curtains…disarray letters
on her desk…speak to her
in the scrape of gold red
autumn leaves dropped so
carelessly upon her porch,
in sunlit torch-ed flutter
imaged on her ceiling wall

a scrying need changed
currents in her blood…
changed direction of  a
subtle weather vane within
her brain to mediate faint
polarities of thought

a water thirst rose underneath
her tongue… a drowsy scarf…
a need to compass steps across
a room…she pinched her palm
for focus…for holding of a golden
thought against fading brevity
of  the pregnant light

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Andrew Wyeth
“Wind from the Sea” sketch