poems by rachel kellum
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Reverie in Green
We are so much water, it is no wonder
even when we have been held all night,
all morning, by a light filled, spacious cabin,
we go outside and follow the wet roar
we heard the night before when we arrived,
somewhere north.
We study downed limbs and crushed, rusted cans
under a young sun to remember the way back, trusting sound
will take us somewhere safely shaded by midday.
And there it is. The lowest place on this limb
of hill, flowing. We must be like this, willing
to sink into the lowest places, quench them,
make green with our own falling dance through
space, over rocks and mossy beds, past powerless
immersed twigs, useless rudders steering
back and forth in currents, snagging red leaves,
pulling on staunch, still trees.
Oh this green at the edge of wet! It blesses
our bare feet, sends roots around rock, into spongy
soil, clinging, unmoved by gallons of gravity.
Green holds on. Witness of shift and shadow’s icy shine.
Six pointed stars of green. Long waving blades
of green. Bundled sponges of submerged green.
My heart—what is this thing?—a star and blade and sponge.
The roar opens inside, tugs my body downhill,
a thread pulling me through the eye
of a needle of sound, this fabric of falling clearly
down, seeking whatever is barren and crisp, whatever
has roots that have forgotten their throats.
Let me find these roots in you, my love, let me sink
into your loamy triumph, cradle stones of shame, fill
you plump with this that makes us live, this pouring
with which we brim bowls and mouths and parched hearts.
Watch them swell and shoot stars, watch the blades
we’ve pushed through bend like grass, not knives
but long reachings, green swayings toward the roar.
waking into sleep, take your waking slow
You wake up a sphere
of clear crystal and the bed
is in you. The blinds shoot
curved through your belly
and light glints where
there are no eyes.
You roll out of bed
and surprising legs lift
you, hands touch
your belly, shoulders
open, tangled hair
catches still
air, and the invisible
eyeball itches,
now two.
You scratch their edges,
rub with clumsy fists. Blink.
Shuffle to the toilet, the mirror.
And the flesh’s uncertain
and certain longings begin
knotting the endless net
of thoughts by which you
organize your day into
that which you
want and don’t want
to fall through you. This
is the morning’s way.
with thanks to Roethke, Emerson and Tenzin Wangyal
2010
and this poem is finally a leaf
My poems have been a gas
powered lawn mower
with a duct taped wheel,
an electric weed eater flinging
pebbles into spiral galaxies
and blistered palms around brooms
on sidewalks littered by trees
pruned by hail.
My poems have been wordless
rich stench of gasoline and ripped
green, the ping of stones
against chain link, the weeds
whose roots I’m too tired
to pull, too careful
to poison, so the roots
stay, the green flies.
Buddhist sages say thought
is the root of speech, speech
the stem of actions, actions
the leaves. And I wonder
if my garden means me.
college campus trees
trees white
and green flash clouds
their leafy teeth. a line
of younger trees are each
tethered to white tipped farm posts,
sentinels of fragile limb and wind.
may they live until the day
my children climb them,
toes dug into bitten bark, birds
scattering at our imminence,
limbs trembling. we’ll look
down at the grass, so well
manicured, dead on each
hacked end, wishing
it were trees, more able
to dance, tickle, whisper.
listen, it would say, you
must not live cut off
on top, faceless in a field.
there are other things to be.
reach out your arms, climb
the trees, see beyond me
then sing to me, weeping,
kissing your feet.
Time to wake up
My dream…Something good was about to happen. I was trying to go back there.
~Samuel, age 7, in tears upon waking late for school after ignoring his mother’s calls
Sometimes, no matter that we slap ourselves to stay awake,
we fall asleep. We wake within someone else’s dream,
driving past their 7-11, their grocery carts, speeding through
their neighborhoods, getting pulled over by their police.
We go with it. Wear their brand of bra. Raise children
in their schools. Watch their favorite movies: horror.
They tolerate ours: foreign drama. Years pass.
We try to remember the dream we were having before,
the one where something good was about to happen.
Then the dreamers who pulled us in—leave,
leave us in their dream. We walk their streets
at night. Paint their walls. Tend their weeds.
We twist and kick to wrest ourselves awake.
Speak in a dream tongue no one else speaks.
The dream quakes. Its inhabitants turn away.
Maybe someone watching us sleep sees
our lips move, hears the sounds becoming heavy
words: wake me. They do. We grab our children’s
hands and try to pull them through.
But the dream holds on to our feet just when
something good is about to happen,
because something good is about to happen,
is always happening, and to be awake means
something we never dreamed.
Green
Somehow my thumb is not green
Anymore, or hasn’t been
For the past four years of pulling green
From the bank and students’ minds.
My house plants died.
My garden is awry
With dried up useless weeds.
But the clover I was given
Ten years ago has survived
And survived and survived.
What spark in those blind
Tuberous roots shines?
Is it my hope?
Is it my refusal to grieve?
Is it God?
No matter how limp, shriveled,
Brown, barren, or how deep
My disappointed sigh,
All it wants, like me, is gentle
Water, living soil, light.
Up come the tender leaves
That fold up at night!
Up come the fingered cups
Reaching, nodding, sun white!
How many dozens of springs
Has it given me in ten years of life?
Why wait on the springtime sun
When the sun is my own sight?
Detachment
You’ve walked in like a worldless god
and claimed me as your home.
How is it these arms cannot hold?
How is it this hair needs no tangled hands,
these thighs no tremble? Whose breath is this?
Are you a demon or an angel?
You, wordless, whisper, give it all away.
At once I am an onion cliché, peeling back and back
in your hands. And there are no tears
for what falls: couches, hair, clothes,
trinkets, houses, a rainbow of countless gods,
and no tears to find that, smaller
and smaller, I am okay. I am
an emptiness that watches and waits
to be passed through.
Waking up on my 39th birthday
Yellow white light, unknown birds,
first sight, first sound, first
day of my fortieth year.
Somehow, my boys also woke
naturally , sparing me the normal
morning routine, the horrible beep, beep, beep.
Happy birthday, Mama, from the fifteen year old
girl I never see. Happy birthday, Mom, from the small boy, seven,
sockless, descending stairs, otherwise fully dressed.
Happy birthday, Mommy, from the big boy, ten,
with a kiss. And O! the small boy announced,
It is Poem in Your Pocket Day! I am shocked.
After four decades, this much bliss!
We found and pocketed four poems,
walked four ways into morning, into this.
We want
We want to arrive somewhere safe,
a place where what and who we need are near.
We want to know we will go on being loved,
that there is music behind our fragile living
to which death is not the only one dancing.
We want to shake the guitar of living into vibrato
to live like a lover with eyes closed into music,
lips parted loose, unselfconsciously sound.
We want to be touched with gentle purpose,
like wind in yellow grasses. Dance, drop seeds.
We must continue dying, drying out to do so,
become green again and again, find love in pollen,
make love yellow legged in sunflowers.
We want not to suffer separation, and
our wanting makes our suffering worse.
So we save seeds and pollen in jars,
sing to them: we want love to be this easy.