Found in a notebook:
Wings
I have wings,
they are wooden and heavy,
difficult to fly a straight line,
impossible to land softly, accurately,
still, I fly.
Life
Live with the immediacy of a small bird
in the impossible distance between stars,
all pregnant force and vestal patience.
Dawn
Then sunlight turns the hillside green and goldenrod,
we curl like leaves in that autumn dawn,
take it as a sign of promise.
Poetry on the run 
I love all, but most the one about the wooden wings….
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Simpatico…
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This is fantastic. I especially like Life.
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Thanks Bob.
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Ron, making me run for the dictionary…this time it was “vestal”.
I think this one is extremely powerful. I don’t always see the connect (or disconnect?) that you are playing with by using separate themed stanzas, but in this piece from Mystery Cave, the first and second stanzas are tied so blissfully together with the idea of flight. I feel there’s much to be said about this poem, and I’m going to try to state my thoughts clearly and faithfully….
First, the ‘Wings’ section: This is how it feels to live, abundantly heavy and ponderous, willy-nilly, awkward, completely out of our element. Yet fly we must. We have no choice.
Then, you carry this into ‘Life’, with the very vivid image of a small bird in the far reaches of outer space, and the very important word to my mind, which brings it together: “immediacy”. A bird is small and delicate, easily attuned to flight, which is IT’S only real life orientation that humans care about. This bird is us, flying between stars in an infinite void. Yet it’s movements are delicate and alert.
And then the third line in ‘Life’ is “pregnant force” and “vestal patience”. You’re getting a bit scientific with this piece, so I’ll say this reminds me of inertia, or weightlessness. Birds have hollow bones, making flight easier. And in Space they would be almost motionless. I see here a bird’s colored crest (maybe yellow?), along with the image of a vestal virgin after looking up vestal, which imbues the word “pregnant” with further depth and layers. And vestal…waiting for the sexual act or consummation being the denotation of the phrase “vestal patience”, but here you seem to be saying that the patience is eternal? The use of vestal implies cosmology or religions, so that’s how it rings to me. And the distance between stars seems infinite, or “impossible”. Here, impossible brings the bird down, yet fly we must.
And the finale, ‘Dawn’, we return to Earth which is the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flight. I adore the curling like autumn leaves on the hillside, a powerful image which shines so brightly with green and goldenrod (“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold”). So we see this idyllic dawn, which is, surprisingly, autumnal–not bearing the hope of Springtime. Yet, we “take it as a sign of promise.”
I think this is one of my many favorite pieces by you.
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Thank you Holly for reading this so carefully, and for your insightful words. Right now I feel I am working with the bare minimum of tools in my poetry, everything is such a struggle at the moment, so for you to read this as you have is most reassuring and gratifying. ~Ron
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‘working with the bare minimum of tools in my poetry’–I know this feeling of struggle well. Especially over the last five years or so–and also especially since the beginning of the silence of the pandemic. But at the same time, this phrase you use can be a good thing, I think. I like poetry that sticks to ‘the bare minimum’, that doesn’t ‘try too hard’ to be so poetic–sometimes the struggle for me is figuring out how to try to not try too hard. And that is something that you have beautifully executed here, I think. These verses feel natural, unforced and deep.
And I love Holly’s comment about the ‘connect (or disconnect)’ in these Mystery Cave poems of yours. I often find myself feeling like two apparently disparate pieces that have been banging around in my journals suddenly seem connected. I don’t always try to figure out why. I think that maybe there is something happening here, with these connections, that is happening at a deeper, sub-conscious level. And if we look too close, try to use too powerful of a microscope we may just ge a frightening glimpse of the Em-Yu-Ess-Ee and then the whole thing might come crumbling down, or just get stuck like cement and lose the life of its own.
I will contentedly and happily let my deeper mind wonder and play with these juxtapositions of verses, while I monkey around here in the so-called real world….
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Yes, I agree the bare minimum is where the magic is found. It is a struggle to not try too hard, yet to not give up too soon…always it is about the balance.
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It’s magical
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Thank you.
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