On the Advent of the Sun

Here is a poem I read at the solstice event with Sacred Way Poets.

 

My love, I long to meet you.

by Rachel Hyde

 

I spiraled onto the bright hill of Bethlehem,

but there was only a starred grotto below and a church above

and priests in black covering your birth-scent—

no mule, no manger, no blessed solstice body.

 

I’ve lit four candles and lie like the Virgin,

slide sugared labors in and out of heat to call you near,

prepare for the press of holly-stained lips,

the brush of you, balsam-haired—

 

My love, I long to know you.

I embrace your twinkling image, God of the Christmas Tree.

I wrap and unwrap and pretend you are within.

Take off your robe of runic red.

 

I ask your name and it is Nativity; I ask and am told you are near.

I ask your name and it is Mystery; I ask and am told you’re here.

Another Haiku from December

December brings with it a myriad of demands on my energy. The impulse is towards a great dissipation of creative thought and effort, and there are certainly days where the haiku is the most approachable form of poetry due to the containment it offers.

 

Winter haiku

by Rachel Hyde

 

Rudimentary black

from winter’s char, branches splay

to ashen roof-slides.

Poetry Reading with Sacred Way

I had the privilege of reading some of my poems, along with other members of the weekly poetry group I participate in, on December 22, 2011, at the Solstice Night at Sacred Way event. I found it enlivening to experience poetry in a new dimension, that of performer and audience and it has encourage me to consider more deeply the sound devices in my poetry and what sort of effects I can produce for future readings. I read the poems “I Wanted Tigers,” “If Asked,” “The Conjurer’s Song,” and “My Love, I Long to Meet You.”

Haiku for Today

It is raining on all the things outside my window this morning. A draft for today…

 

Haiku in Wet December

by Rachel Hyde

 

Rain’s silver tongue slicks

over fringed hemlocks, leaving

precarious drops.

Draft: Heaven and Hell come to prompt

This is a draft attempt on a prompt from poetry class to write a poem, or two poems on Heaven and Hell.

 

If Asked

by Rachel Hyde

 

Has someone told you of hell? Say they were wrong;

it shifts: as opaque as loss, as empty as your grasp.

It is always worse than you imagined.

 

Cup heaven in your palm; think how familiar its shimmer,

its cresting certainty, the smell of the beloved’s body.

Hear it singing? Like the lover, to touch it brings clarity.

 

Do not mistake it for a miracle; it is natural as birth.

POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE: DRAFTS, DRAFTS, QUICK RESPONSES, DAY 30

I will come back to this one. It is an idea I would like to develop more, but have too many irons in the fire today to really work with it. Today’s prompt was to write a poem about “against all odds.”

 

The Great Ones

by Rachel Hyde

 

Some miracles are impossible

to ignore—celebrated, fated

and flashing from the brook

of history;

not so the everyman’s—

not so the everywoman’s—

you who might choose to flame

out in glory, if only glory

was more available.

You will rise each day,

and rise again,

tired and pained with small things

of which no one sings,

and you will do them with heart

filled with uncertainties, not prophecy,

nor shining vision. Your god

a wisp that you conjure by

breaking back at the bellows of diligence.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 29

I have been working on several writing projects (not the least of which is a novel for Nanowrimo, which I hope to blog about soon), including some of the poems that I am holding back for submissions, so I have not been able to put forth a draft each day for the November Poem-A-Day Challenge, but I have one today. The prompt today was to write a poem about day or evening, and this is my simple offering.

 

Song of the Steelworker’s Wife

by Rachel Hyde

 

I will never say, when you leave

in the dark of 5am,

that I am afraid the road might

eat you—

how can you stay?

Life is work and work is life.

I will not tell you how

I fly to you all day,

erase miles, and think your

thread as thin as floss,

and will it thicker.

If I was pious, I would pray

all evening that you uncover

no treachery in tires, or sleep,

or glinting steel and wet light.

When you return,

be silent

about furnaces and smelting fires,

and we will name our love Faith.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 13

Today’s prompt: write a poem about kindness.

 

Fifteen Years in the Periphery

by Rachel Hyde

 

He brings me cups of kindness,

dishes done and small acts

of service—I see him

 

out of the corner of my eye,

putting love on the list. Some day

when I’ve time enough,

 

I promise to pour, in kind.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 12

Today’s prompt: to write a poem that deals with excess.

 

Peace of Cake

by Rachel Hyde

 

In this house, there is an excess

of granola bar wrappers, outsides—

I’m not kidding.

Everywhere a child-culprit

comes to defile a surface with the litter

of snacking and leisure.

Six, seven, eight children

consume by case; allow me

my case. Where did they come from?

You can work all day for a drink

and never find a clean glass;

Who is crying? Such a sensitivity

to injustice; how fair

a future we’ll see!

Oh, they are clever

and pretty, too,

but their kingdom offers no order.

Who is the muse of rules,

the poet of consequence?

Who can sing their shape,

then hide from the song?

Someone is always playing the piano,

but the broom goes unused.

Exquisite Corpse WIP for Poetry Workshop

This is from an exercise in poetry workshop this week. Each participate writes down and image on a piece of paper, and then you take the collection of images you received and turn them into a poem. This is not where I want it to be yet.

 

Advent

by Rachel Hyde

 

November leaves the air memory-dust

as faded sun folds in—

that is the moon, howl

wolves or wind,

bend to split my ear:

spiral in this snow path,

bird-borne, winter-worn—

snow on the lambs’ wool

yellows and curls

amid bleating black tongues, hooves—

fairy-deer paw the sparkle;

 

forty pounds of coats, scarves, galoshes

cloud like coal from busy chimneys

weary, travelers chart the Celestine,

gather in dozens, await the tree ablaze,

smoking from the light.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Multi-day off-prompt

Ok, so days 6,7,8, around in there, I worked on this poem rather than the prompts. Perhaps I will go back to the prompts from these days and do poems. This was from an exercise in poetry workshop where we had to draw a tarot card from a Rider-Waite deck and write a poem on it. I drew the Two of Cups.

The Twice-Tongued Two of Cups,

a poem of  the Tarot

by Rachel Hyde

 

My lord.  My lady. My winged seraphim—

gold-sealed and called soul-mates, these two.

We’ll set up house where the sun rises—

Two cups and a cottage built on the rim—

red-roofed and turned to the east, our home.

Take mine. Play nice; she’s me, that’s you.

Who is this? Eyes closed, it’s not us.

They are the pair from the restaurant,

 

silent, the table as wide as the sea.

See, their mute harmony stifles.

I’ll place my laurel about your pate;

now put your wreathed roses on mine.

This lad’s some shy, dun-booted lover,

his tunic floral and Italianate, not you.

 

You’re no sinner, and look, I’m a saint—

so synergistic, so whole, so entwined,

but you know I can’t demure, act a saint.

Of all the things I want, this is not one.

 

Listen, lemon leggings and gentle-skin boots:

I’ll darn your doublet.

Siamese and wound-less, no one’s ill-used.

This caduceus is useless— ignore it.

From under my blue cloak, I draw my cup—

lift it to my own lips, as you drink from yours.

We’re pale twins, a couple, no half its own—

The caduceus rises, the caduceus rises.

 

God damn your need for peace.

I need a kiss; get me the scissors.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 5

Today’s prompt: to write a poem about something broken.

 

After I Had Known You for Quiet Years

by Rachel Hyde

 

You broke our door,

your fist in an upper panel,

bursting like a star

and I love stars.

In your struggle,

I wanted

to open

like

the

cosmos.

You

had

been

closed,

static

and stoic

as a door—

until you

fractured

before me

and I smelled humanity

in drops of knuckle-blood

and wooden splinters.

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 4

Today’s prompt: to write a poem about something unexpected.

 

Cosmic Scorecard

by Rachel Hyde

 

I was born.

I lost points for:

presenting the wrong parts.

rendering planned names useless.

requiring a new wardrobe.

exceeding the standard size.

damaging my mother,

also, bruising myself all over.

forgetting to grow hair,

and then growing the wrong color.

undervaluing breastmilk.

getting left with my father,

and then my grandmother.

precluding future siblings.

shitting my pants.

crying.

I won points for:

making sure my hair,

while not punctual,

was at least curly

(exactly as predicted).

Poem-A-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 3

Today’s prompt: to write a poem built around the idea of “sort of.”

 

Long Life

by Rachel Hyde

 

I am sure this is some sort of bliss,

this thing we have that’s not misery—

a wrapping and unwrapping,

chiming years at each rotation.

 

I am sure this is some sort of life,

our gentle turns and trades:

who is the beloved one today?

Peace comes with ablation.

 

I am sure this is some sort of love—

espaliered hearts bear more fruit

and hazy eyes take less notice—

this, youth’s shared cessation.

Poem-a-Day Challenge: Drafts, Drafts, Quick Responses, Day 2

Today’s prompt: to write a poem that opens with a quote as an epigraph.

Honey-fied

by Rachel Hyde

 

“The sunbeams have filled me like a honeycomb.

It is the moment of fullness…”

–D.H. Lawrence

 

Rays in the gut nourish, at least

blanche, the day.

How wicked, how wicked

clouds and all their amorphous

hate. Wish me something!

I am full.

Wish me anything.

I am a honeycomb. I am light

and love, bound in six—

bee-built, abdomen-carved wax.

Feel my chest, it buzzes still.

To blush is not the same,

the filling then of blood

feels like a loss, a shame—

but take me, all in honey

encased; I will drip,

I will drip, in tombs

one million suns to come.