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Poetry
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Poetry
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I'd like to share these
poems with you by Mary K. Stillwell
 Mary K. Stillwell |
Travel
Plans As I sat on the toilet of a Boeing 727, somewhere over Ohio riding United tourist, I imagined my last moments of life falling bare-assed through the sky, trying to reach down to pull up my pants, then, tumbling, trying to reach up to pull my pants down, so I would land respectably dressed. Reprinted with permission from The Paris Review Anthology Copyright © 1990 by Mary K. Stillwell |
Crane River
Here we were, at
our favorite restaurant,
celebrating, moon to moon, our 163rd anniversary—
it was before the feathered cranes came—
kids were safe with the sitter—
before the origami ones
took flight, and we were,
as couples do,
dressed in our best and polite,
recalling that which had passed before,
like stepping stones
across a wide uncharted sea. Yet,
we found our way here,
to the story-high windows
and the giant phallus just blocks away,
to peanut-covered halibut
and Cajun chicken,
looking backwards and forwards
--he tried my rice,
I tasted his fish,
he ordered beer,
I said coffee—
and the word Mineola
joined us, and Bogata,
the Judson Church steps,
and Prospect Avenue,
and then mother and father, death
and a coming to terms,
smiling and the sharing of food
and the kids, forks and hard rolls
--and then cutting the meat
from the breast, the chicken took
flight, skipping like a stone on water
across my white blouse,
and before I knew he had, in
a single gesture schooled by two children,
stood, dipped the corner of his napkin
into his water glass, smoothly,
rounding the corner of the table,
began to dab the front of my blouse
--turning the napkin and dipping,
dabbing again, removing the chicken
stain, the burnt Cajun spices, rubbing
the fabric clean while I wondered at this man,
father of my children, taking care
until he, by accident, I thought,
touched my breast and I looked
into the green of his eyes,
to purposefulness on this the 163rd anniversary
of our marriage and I began to rise
toward him, like the first crane rising
to turn toward home.
Copyright
© 1999
by
Mary K. Stillwell
Johan's Turn
The sheer heart-in-the-throat drop,
the roller coaster's headlong dive,
the 767's bank into Johan's sharp
turn, I've forgotten it,
my daughter asleeep in her bassinet,
my Britaña already in hand,
this jointure, this point of departure
high in the air,
high above the Andes,
Guadeloupe, Monsauratte below,
turning, suddenly, home.
Exhilaration: thrill and fear, anticipation
and the notion of death. Only eight months ago,
he was alive and breathing heavily, only one month,
to the day, later, dead, Johan, forever posing
his body leaning toward the camera, white hair
flying, for the photopraph at the look-out point,
Bogotá sprawling across the plateau,
splashing up the mountains behind them.
Them, for he is not alone,
behind, my husband, who holds our son.
"Avion, avion," Johan has just pointed
and repeated like a first grade teacher
and we have echoed, learning the turn,
norte to North America, sud to Rio de Janeiro.
The jet trail is barely visible.
Now, this is the steel flame that flickers
across the landscape, this is the silk sleeve
that protects us as we turn suddenly, norte, home.
My daughter asleep in her bassinet,
my Britaña already in hand,
I remember the shades launch
their own fine canoe, cutting the water
as we cut the sky, at the meeting point
high above Bogotá, at Johan's turn.
Reprinted with permission
from
Hurakan
Copyright
© 1995
by
Mary K. Stillwell
Winter Song
A coyote wakes me --
a hoot, a howl in early morning
snow light --
from the next room
where our son, the Colombian hooter
begins his ascent,
rising from the night
toward warm soy
that he will guzzle
then fall back
into sleep again.
We must all wake to coyotes
every now and then,
listen to their singular song,
their collective chorus,
in early morning snow light.
What will we do when the hunter
cuts the last song short?
This day is coming,
and we make plans
to move to coyote country,
post No Hunting signs,
to tuck our son into bed
certain that some morning
he will wake to their hoot,
their howl, the first song
of distance
in early snow light.
Reprinted
with permission
from
Leaning into the Wind
Copyright
© 1997
by
Mary K. Stillwell
Dancing
on the North Lawn
"She
(the earth) is...the only mother we have."
from
a song of the Kayaba,Colombia
"I
could only believe in a god who
dances."
Nietzsche
It is just evening of a hot summer day.
On the north lawn, enclosed by spirea bushes,
a young girl leaps, hurls herself,
into the cold water. Sharp drops cut the face,
slash the arms, pierce the back.
She leaps out. Haauusssh
sounds the water
as it's forced through the garden hose,
thu, thu, thu sounds the pivot
as it lays an arc upon the grass.
In again, and
out. Day recedes.
Cars along the street drive into oblivia.
Under her feet, blades soften.
She shivers. In and out. In and out again.
Light falls from the western sky.
In she spins,
and warms.
The only sounds are the thu, thu, thu
of her heart, haauusssh of her blood.
Feet find holds in air. Hair climbs the neck.
Her arms, first
one and then the other,
reach above her head; she grabs for stars.
This night, this water, these sounds tell
the girl how the great mother danced her children
into being. Grass, skin, hair, and stars tell her all
she will ever need to know in order to live.
Copyright
© 1997
by
Mary K. Stillwell
| Waltz one two three now begin one two three one two three one two three they meet un- certainly he steps back she steps back one two three they embrace they dance ten- tatively one two three she needs his music and he needs her music that makes them dance one two three moving to- gether they dance in wide circles they move to the beat that is deep in their wantings that burns in their dreamings that touches the beauty that lives in their music and one two three leads them to trust in their dancing to love one an- other to move through the night |
 Image by Frank Edler |
Reprinted
with permission
from
Moving to Malibu
Copyright
© 1988
by
Mary K. Stillwell
This Reunion
It is as though
I am kneading dough,
this reunion, folding
from the corners, back
into the center, again,
a rhythm of generations,
one folding
in on, giving itself over to,
the new, and the new
going forth to its own corners.
It is that I am kneading dough
and everything I've been
and everyone from whom I've come
is with me, against my hands.
Reprinted
with permission
from
Moving to Malibu
Copyright
© 1988
by
Mary K. Stillwell
from The Barnet
Poems
Waiting
(1976: Color Lithograph)
I thought there should have been seven,
that I too would have worn a shawl
like the folded wings of the butterfly
against the cold, would have thought my bones
would break in that brittle morning
as I leaned against an opposite beam
and looked past the sand and the sea
to the horizon. I would have said
there was no comfort and that we did not
touch or speak, that it was only the shade
of gray that distinguished us.
We wore our long dark hair parted
and pulled back in a bun.
Perhaps I would have named us
The Poor Widows Waiting at Providence.
Now I even
remember this was not
the way it was. There were six
and I was all of them, looking
toward mauve and clear edges,
looking down and away, toward deep recesses.
I was also looking forward.
What I saw, what passed then for grace,
was more than studied composition.
We Women of the Sea did wait,
and when the sun finally warmed us,
we burst into flame.
Reprinted
with permission
from
Nimrod
Copyright
© 1985
by
Mary K. Stillwell
(This
lithograph is not available on-line,
but
some of Barnet's work can be seen at
Art Brokerage and Sagemore Museum Prints.)
from The Barnet
Poems
Dialogue with
Space
( Oil on canvas, 64
x 68 inches )
1.
Imagine huddling on the lip of the horizon
when the sun's just gone down and the rim's still warm.
Imagine the blade of a knife,
the satin edge of a broken fruit jar,
a cool noose.
2.
If the men were to come home,
they would find these women
and these sacred birds.
They are the blackbirds,
those the crows. That one a morning dove.
The house has become a weightless place.
They would see she is not resting.
She is drawing herself in like a sea needle,
she wants so much. The others
cannot admit to wanting.
The men have been gone so long
that they wear only black and have only
the dimmest memory of them.
3.
She studies the circle,
as far reaching as the sea or the prairie.
She notes the green cat's-eye, which,
from where I stand, I cannot see.
Reprinted
with permission
from
Moving to Malibu
Copyright
© 1988
by
Mary K Stillwell
(
An electronic copy of Barnet's painting
Dialogue
with Space can be viewed at the
Art in Context web site from
the
Tibor de Nagy Gallery. )
from The Barnet
Poems
The Blue Robe
(etching
and aquatint, 1971)
This is The
Blue Robe,
the blue robe.
This
is the woman wearing
the blue robe. This may
be her daughter,
or not. There is
a resemblance, or not.
Mostly, this is a monument.
Touch it.
The arms are cold.
Snow would surely stick.
The woman in the blue robe might
notice, the young girl not.
The eyes, as often in monuments,
are empty. This might also be
Languor. It is a monument to the cat
after all, there,
to the black and stretch
of it. Touch it,
it will purr.
Copyright
© 1985
by
Mary K. Stillwell
(an
electronic copy of The Blue Robe
can
be viewd at the Portland Museum of Art)
After Zeit
und Sein:
Marilyn
Monroe in Omaha
How Marilyn got to Omaha, I'm not
certain,
but there she was standing in the kitchen,
wearing Grandma's WPA apron, frying bacon.
"Hey," I said. She looked up from her work
at the stove and said, "Hey. Over easy?"
"You bet," I said and she served them up,
bacon, eggs the way I like, hash browns,
toast with butter. And lots of hot coffee,
which she drank, too, sitting at kitchen table
in early fall, late on a Sunday afternoon.
"What you doing here," I asked. "In the kitchen?
I'm a woman, aren't I? Why Omaha? You're here.
How else am I to see you?"
"Making bacon and eggs," I said, marveling.
"Because your mother died and her mother.
I'm a woman. I had a mother. I'm dead,"
she said by way of explanation. She was right:
it was soothing having her here.
I would have never guessed it, Marilyn
pouring coffee into my cup here in Omaha.
I got to thinking, people don't know Marilyn,
just hang their own clothes on her. "I played
my part in it," she said smiling and I noticed
as her lips met the coffee cup that they were
regular lips. "When men saw them,"
she said, suddenly, "they thought of their cocks."
I was shocked. "You're pretending,"
she said, and I had to agree. "But what
does this have to do with my mother?" I asked,
and she shrugged that shrug of hers,only now
I saw it was an I-don't-know shrug not
a breast-hiking shrug so men would notice,
though it might be that, too.
"We're both dead," she offered. "Dasein.
Heimat. Dwelling," she continued,
recalling Heidegger,
"We learn from the dead," paraphrasing Holderlin.
So we do, I thought, andenken, my mother's cascade
of words, rain over the falls, generation
after generation into the ultimate silence.
Marilyn came around the table to hug me.
It was not like hugging a star. It was not
hugging a sex goddess. She was no bimbo.
Her dress stayed down; breasts have many uses.
"Heimat," I repeated and I felt her head
nod.
We were two woman, in embrace,
the dead giving life to the living,
along the auseinandersetzen.
Copyright © 1998
by
Mary K. Stillwell
Lilies of the Valley
Sharp as knives, they pierce
the dark plot with deep green blades,
cut into spring sunshine
as clean as steeples.
Within the week they will unfurl,
unwrap into a swirl of promise,
the fine muscles of stem,
darker, knobby, and a drawing back of green,
and the ring of small white bells that sounds
this yard and the next with the fragrance
of lilies, lilies of the valley.
If one should pick them, and one should,
anyone, a quick tug from the center,
there is a squeak,
a sigh really, a breath released
as after a sudden kiss, lilies of the valley,
knife and bell and bloom and heady scent,
as unexpected as love.
Copyright © 1992
by
Mary K. Stillwell
The Circle Dance
The great circle dance at the
September PowWow
is about to begin but
this family has lost a child
over the summer and the grief must be combed
from their hair before they can enter
the circle. The mother walks the grasses
to the west side of the circle. The father
walks the grasses, then the other children,
then the aunts and uncles of this family
who has lost one of its children to accident
over the summer. They stand just outside
the circle, and the old people come with
finger combs and begin running them through
the hair of the family, combing the grief
from the mother, the father, each sister and brother,
aunts and uncles, combing out the grief
like snarls, casting out grief
in tangles. On the north side of the circle,
my scalp tingles. It is grief caught
in my own hair, and I must comb it out
if I am to join the circle. I, too, use my fingers
as a comb, pushing the hair up from the head
and away so the grief can loosen.
This combing takes some time,
and the family begins to cry and the old people,
too, begin to cry, and I on my side of the circle
begin to cry. Tears and grief spill
over my shoulders and run down my legs.
Tears and grief spill over their shoulders
and run down their legs.
The earth receives it as rain, takes it in
as if it were her own because it is her own.
From it she has already begun to fashion
new children to send to us. We
bow to the wisdom of the old people,
enter the circle that we may dance.
Reprinted
with permission
from
Literal Latte
Copyright
© 1995
by
Mary K. Stillwell
For a brief
biography of Mary K. Stillwell, see Creighton University's Nebraska Center for Writers.
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