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Written by Lola Haskins
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Monday, 17 December 2007 |
Editor’s note: This week’s Poetry Corner features Lola Haskins, a resident of Florida, who is recently retired from the University of Florida’s Computer and Information Sciences Department. She is the author of eight books of poetry and also, “The Wing on the Mailbox, A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life.” Lola Haskins is no stranger to Santa Cruz, having read twice here in recent years and twice presented her popular poetry workshops.  Lola Haskins UntitledWhen you live under the mountain
you do not see the mountain.
What mountain, you ask,
stirring your tea,
as your visitor falls silent before the clouds.
The Interpreters Only the shallow as creek-stones in drought misunderstand
our helplessness before landscapes that reach the throat.
The rest of us know that cliffs or clouds can be addressed
only on their own terms, and in languages that have nothing
to do with words. There is a school for this, in a country
which is a long train ride off, and from birth some of us
have aspired to study there. But when our applications are
returned with blank pages inside, we don’t know what to do.
Still, we watch for signs— the tone-marks of a hawk angling
her wings before she drops to grass— the directions a dying wave
has fingered onto the sand. We would have despaired long ago
were it not that once in awhile, one of our tongue-tied number
vanishes. And returns glorious— fluent in “storm cloud,” “sage,”
or “boiling lava.” A child’s aptitude for language may surface
early, as when his mother notices smoke skirling from his mouth
as she points at the sky, or red rock appearing in his hands
when she says “canyon”. Wanting to keep him close, she may
not tell him about the train. It will not matter. He will find it.
Perhaps there are teachers among us. There is a man I’ve
been following for hours, who walks the narrow trail as if
he had no feet. I think by that, and by the way his hair
brightens at the base of his neck, he may know. I gather
my pace, to see if it was he singing overhead, but he
must have been speaking “sky” because when I turn
the corner, a cloud is rising off the stones, rimmed
with an eloquence I have encountered only in dreams.
Five from the Lake (Five short poems)
1. Carpenter Bee
A monk, transfixed by
the great bell of dawn.
How small, confronting morning,
are his wings.
2. First Light
The lake has
eaten fire.
Quietly
the ibises roost
3. Mockingbird
The silence between twigs,
songs
asleep on their mats.
4. Wood Stork, Wading
An arched claw and
its liquid twin:
Pas de deux for one.
5. Enlightenment
As the heron lifts it free
the fish suddenly
understands.
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