On this, the longest night, they should sleep best,
but something summons bears from den-snug slumber.
Perhaps a wisp of carol disturbs their rest,
wafts from a village far below. Bears lumber
from earthy mouths of dens, and, stumbling, go
with stifled yawns and heavy-lidded eyes
to dent their paw-prints in the virgin snow.
Frost nips each nose; stars glitter in the skies.
This still clearing is hedged with sentinel pines
roofed by the shining sweep of Milky Way.
One by one they come, then wavering lines
of dusky shapes--the black, the brown, the gray,
the heavy gravid females, the born-last-spring
still close beside their mothers, grumpy males
crossly grumbling. They form a ragged ring.
The murmurs fade; expectant hush prevails.
It's not the same light revelry that spurred
their summer polkas. This is ritual turning
and clapping paws to inward rhythms heard
in ursine souls, mute music of their yearning.
Bit by bit the dance grows swift. There springs
an ecstacy of motion gripping all.
They spiral, swirl and twirl in dizzy rings
until, exhausted, panting, spent, they fall.
An old bear, flecks of grey in once-dark fur,
with faltering steps approaches each prone bear.
He dips his stick into the gourd to stir
the sacred honey, touches it to where
each open mouth awaits. They're reassured
that sunlight will return and days grow long
and bushes lush with berries be their reward
and salmon leap, bees buzz their honeyed song.
Already languorous, bears rise to their feet,
give one another ritual hugs, then go,
eyes almost closed again, back to the sweet
warm snugness of each den, secure from snow,
to curl in their soft fur, nor need to rouse
to plunge for leaping salmon that have chanced
into their dreams. They wonder as they drowse
if they have danced or only dreamed they danced.
Phyllis Sterling Smith
top
The Day After
This was written soon after 9/11
“The world has changed since yesterday.”
Don’t try to tell that to the jay
who, raucous, head cocked, shrills his need
for a feeder full of sunflower seed.
Nor do the voices, filled with doom,
stop sunlight filtering to this room
as light and shade play through the trees
stirred by an ocean-scented breeze.
“The world has changed since yesterday.”
Well, yes, of course, that is the way
it’s always been. Earth shifts. Men die.
The seasons change. Storms cross the sky.
Dark hair sprouts new shafts of white
as age creeps on us in the night.
This sadness, too, could go away--
it may--
it might--
Phyllis 2001
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LOST IN TIME
Should I forget my name
and yours--
and shuffle, groping, speechless
through corridors half seen,
my search will not be aimless
nor my mind quite empty.
My toothless cry
will be your forgotten name.
My blind scan of each face
will seek the features that are yours.
Deaf ears will listen for your voice.
Driving my shambling steps will be
an ache of longing,
encompassing, intense,
for an essence that is you
and for your arms that held me close
so long ago -
or was it yesterday?
Phyllis Sterling Smith
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MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL
The woman at the glass, with tilted head,
lifted her eyebrows slightly, firmed her jaw,
tightened the corners of her mouth, and saw
not wrinkled age, but, smiling in its stead,
a younger face she thought to be her own.
She turned, held stomach flat, and slant-wise caught
the image of a girl, still slender, taut,
unlike the dumpy shape to which she’d grown.
So too my land, mottled with history’s marks,
myopic in her shabby smog-grey age,
humming star-spangled tunes, once proudly sung,
obliquely sees, past dark fear-mugger parks,
reflected by her monstrous video stage --
lawn social, elm-shade summers, centuries young.
top
OF WHAT SHALL I WRITE?
Of how the restful morning fog drifts through the trees?
Of how the sun breaks through at noon
to show the town below my hill-home’s height
with buildings like a child’s toy city?
Of glint and glimmer on the bay
and glitter of bridge-borne autos
like faceted jewels reflecting sunlight?
Somewhere a mother cries
as she sees her fevered child who dies
of hunger or war-wounds, and the flies
crawl on his eyes.
Or should I praise the comfort of my home,
its furnace fired with foreign fuel,
my bed made cosy under imported down
or pretty with its hand-stitched, hand-pieced quilt
(inexpensive--imported, of course)
Somewhere child and woman lean
close to their stitching, barely seen
in waning light at end of day
their long, long hours for meager pay.
Or should I write of my God-favored country
rich from its forests
and safe within its moats of sea
smug in its heritage of liberty and human rights?
Somewhere are men who die to save a rag,
a scrap of tattered cloth they call
a flag --
and guess who crushes them with steely
might
and righteous mien? Is
that our right?
Oh yes, we would bequeath to you, oppressed,
misguided folk, our own red, white, and blue
beneath a Christian Cross or Star of David.
Oh, by the way, it’s up to you use your oil to pay
our multi-national corporations to lay
your sewers and water pipes,
rebuild what bombs laid waste.
Phyllis Sterling Smith, 2003
top
TO A DANDELION
What a honey!
What a dilly!
If it were a rose or lily
o what prizes I would gather!
See how healthy!
See that vigor! When it grows a little
bigger
I won’t saw it down. No, rather
I will smother it with culture,
cultivate, and spade, and mulch ‘er
until (experience is my guide )
eventually it will have died
like other products of such toil
nurtured in the self-same soil.
top
ASILOMAR
The one I love is sunrise on a dune
before the dawn light probes the restive sea.
The sweet slope of his body shelters me
as rising sun farewells the setting moon.
The one I love is radiant warmth of noon
that heats the sand upon the hillock’s lee.
I hear the distant breakers crashing free
but sound is muffled here in our cocoon.
The one I love is sunset on the ocean.
Two pelicans fly by in silhouette,
their slow wingbeats like heartbeats, then they rest
on unseen lifts of air, their forward motion
a soaring. Crimson sun descends to set
then plunges, fanning fire across the west.
top
EIGHTH AUTUMN
(a haiku sequence)
SWING
My target is blue
that shimmers and shifts.
Aiming toes, I fly.
HORIZONTAL BAR
Hung bat-like, knees clamped,
hair streaming toward magnet earth,
clear blue bowl below.
MISER
In my jeans pocket
I hoard gold and copper leaves.
They crumble to brown.
top
The Gift of Words
You say I have the gift of words.
Someday my words may fail me,
lost in a maze of neurons, wells of words
with no bucket to retrieve them,
or they may tangle on my tongue
like Hannah’s yarn after her stroke
when she worried helplessly
among the skeins and needles.
Gifts are for giving.
Thus I would bequeath to you
a shimmer of words when I no longer
can order them into their patterns.
They will glint like breeze-tossed aspen leaves
or glimmer like showers in sunshine
where each drop holds a rainbow.
They will be as numerous as stars
as facets of waves
as moments of our love
and fragrant like water touching parched earth.
They will hold bird song and wind song
but, alas, no Mozart, no sonnets, no meaning,
just their fragments.
I will scatter them at random on a fragile web
spangled with words and syllables like sequins
and toss it scarf-like over you.
This is my gift.
top
TO POETS LEST
THEY FAIL TO SELL IT
Sing not of poison oak or sticker.
The sunlit meadow plays no tricks.
Hear note of lark or bee and sing it.
Ignore the broken wing or sting.
Reject vast emptiness of ocean.
Its rosy shells are better shown.
Man’s poisoned air may choke and stifle
Sing only of impassioned flights.
For gloomy word be reprimanded.
Don’t let it slip that man is damned.
This bent brown child convulsed with rickets?
Try gentler views, more wisely risked.
Avert your eyes from floorless chasm.
Erect for skulls a smiling mask.
top
When I Am Young Again
I’ll toss this cane above my head
and whirl it
lead the parade
with spirited high-stepping prance;
I’ll wear a flirty skirt
to swish and swirl
as I twirl and dance --
when I am young again.
I will fly
condor high
beneath translucent whispering wings
of nylon (yellow, I think, or pink)
my strong non-aching muscles braced
against the cross-bar, look down
on small foreshortened trees,
fields and houses, people, cows.
I’ll share an updraft with a circling hawk,
above us endless sky --
when I am young again.
These bent hands will flow once more
with ease across the ivory keys,
memories in my finger-tips
of Paderewski’s Minuet,
Mozart’s Sonata in C Major,
evoking warm breeze through open windows
and scent of new-mown grass --
when I am young again.
I will learn Balinese and walk
barefoot on a beach, swim free
with parrot fish and manta ray
through corals of the barrier reef.
I will wear
hibiscus flowers in my hair --
when I am young again...
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SPRING IS
Spring is not allegory. It is weighed
in density of sound from drunken bees,
intensity of sky, contrast of shade
and glinting leaf, the whisper brush of breeze
against my sleeveless skin; and it is seen
in swooping jay’s blue stitchery that sews
pure cherry blossom white to tender green.
Spring is the sun-baked boards beneath bare toes,
strawberries tart on tongue, the first warm night
that lilac scent, as thick as honey pours
through opened windows, moths around the light
and filmy dust of pollen on the floors.
Don’t try to find a meaning or define,
For spring is real
and here
and now
and mine!
top
THIS YEAR villanelle
as
spring comes tenderly
sun beads the silver threads of rain
too frail for weight of memory.
The scent of loam and hum of bee
drift faintly to her once again
this year as spring comes tenderly.
This is the year she will not see
the blossoms bud and bloom and wane
too frail for weight of memory.
She thinks she once was young and free
not bound to bed in which she’s lain
this year ass spring comes tenderly.
New grasses’ slim fragility
mirrors her failing pulse and vein
too frail for weight of memory.
Ban hope, ban song, ban flowering tree!
Remembering brings too much pain
this year as spring comes tenderly
too frail for weight of memory.
top
Sonnet XVII of THE EVIDENCES by Jorge de Sena
translated by Phyllis Sterling Smith
In deep dark where filtered shafts of moon
should sift through clouds and silver life with light,
each shape is of unfathomed shade of night
like contrition from the body dying soon.
Last gasps of struggling breath, as froth appears
upon the lips, glazing the vacant stare,
fingers curl, while slowly unravel there,
one by one, the memories of the years.
Suddenly exploded, or in serene
slow atrophy of muscles that were hard,
the spirit shatters to myriads, shard by shard,
that were it successively. Scarce seen
is the thin pure edge where there is only sorrow.
From the decay triads will rise tomorrow.
top
I included this sonnet at the end of my preface
to The Evidences, the book of Jorge de Sena's poems which
I translated.
To Jorge de Sena
I almost shook your hand one Eastertide;
I thought to meet you, father of my friend
-- a hope to which your illness put an end --
nor had I read your poems before you died.
For fifteen years and more since then I've tried
to feel with your emotions and to lend
to you my eyes, my ears, my skin -- to bend
my tongue to Portuguese, to live inside
your mind, your nerves, your passions, and to seek
freedom from tyrants with your indignation,
the sad deep vein of rage with which
you wrought
tenderness and voice for who can't speak.
Through dark mirrors of inexact translation
I strive to resurrect your living
thought.
top
Now I Grieve
Now I grieve for the passing of my grief.
Intending to be constant in my sorrow
I fed my eyes on hollow air where you were not,
I fed my ears on silence of your voice
and winter joined to celebrate your absence;
hills misted with remoteness and no green thing intruded.
I willed my sorrowing to last forever.
But now my foolish heart forgets to mourn.
Warm air says wild plum is blossoming,
bricks press their sun-baked warmth against my palm,
pale jade leaf buds bead the lacy branches
and frail new insects try transparent wings.
I grieve that these small things can ease my sorrow
for when it goes we will be doubly parted.
top
The Old Lovers
Asleep, their bodies nest as spoon to spoon
or else are pressed for comfort spine to spine.
One of them dreams a night of summer moon
when firm young bodies meet and intertwine.
One dreams they climb a trail in blazing noon,
leap boulders, savor scent of fir and pine,
gaze down on unknown lands they'll travel soon,
their years before them in an endless line.
They dream apart, but each dreams they're together.
They drowse then turn and waken face to face,
illusion's threads unravelling
seam by seam.
They touch the dear soft flesh of one another
then almost desperately the two embrace,
fearing that one might soon hold
only dream.
top
For Evie
(1975-1984)
What would I bring to you? A broken blossom
whose crushed scent bears a hint of summer day.
What would I sing to you? A wordless fragment
that haunts the mind and will not go away.
What can I tell of you? Just bits and pieces -
blue eyes alight with flickering leaves and sky,
flawed body striving to creep down the rampway,
attempts at words your tangled nerves deny.
What will I remember? Sweet endurance
of prisoned desires your voice could not express.
What have you left me? Arms that knew your softness
and - where you were - an aching emptiness.
top
CESAR
De Colores . . . Springtime spreads its rainbow
lo arco de la primavera . . .
of field and woodland greens,
poppy orange and apple blossom white,
gold mustard flowers among the burgeoning vines.
Through mist of springtime rain
--or is it tears?--
I see other colors:
blue of faded jeans,
brown skin darkened by long days in the sun,
gray hair that once had been as black
as eagle wings across a crimson banner
that led the powerless to justice.
Today
like a snake uncoiling
the message spread
across the bottom of the television screen.
“News bulletin: Cesar Chavez is dead. . .”
Small brown man,
gentle, implacable,
strong in a body worn with sacrifice,
passionate, compassionate,
whose sad eyes saw injustice and never flinched before it,
who will see for us now?
You who worked the soil return to it
a part of the rich dark earth
where seeds will come to life
and ripen into harvest.
The sun is setting now
spread red across the west.
The crowd would clap its thousand hands
and the chant arise: “Ce-sar! Ce-sar!”
faster and faster into a formless roar and then. . .
Is that an eagle soaring against the sunset?
top
To a Teen-aged Foster Son
For this tall son of mine whom I have never
held sheltered in my arms,
who came too late to be anointed
with baby oil and care, those proven charms
against encroaching evil --
for you I knit and purl a cabled vest,
each loop a magic link of chainmail armor,
a magic shield. When you are dressed
in this warm wool, remember
how fingers fed each stitch of gold,
regretting times they could not touch to comfort,
missing bedtime stories never told,
yet trying, mystically, to fachion
an amulet from harm.
Where you go now I cannot follow.
Go safe. Go wrapped in love. Go warm.
top
Choosing
a Pet
If
I Could
Bear
Ceremony
The
Day After
Lost
in Time
Mirror,
Mirror, on the Wall
Asilomar
To
a Dandelion
Eighth
Autumn (haiku sequence)
The
Gift of Words
When
I Am Young Again
Spring
Is
ThisYear
(a villanelle)
To
Jorge de Sena
