GETTING BACK
TO WHERE I STAND
I was never fearless
how could 5'2" of me
be very tall
but where I once stood
children are
wonder in their hands
the roar of searchlights in their eyes
and sea sounds of infinite sources
in their ears
And on the beach
one foot discovering
sand dollars, ruffled shells
by the sea displayed
To get back there, I'd have to climb
over the selves I've since discarded;
so many sea logs, sun parched, silvered.
Impossible to do,
having shed so many skins
like beaches do
each wave peeled back
until I'd have exposed
the urchin, starfish, anemone and kelp
parts of the shoreline self
we never get to know.
b weidel 2/3/70
WHERE CREEK MEETS OCEAN
Survey
this mighty beach
epitome of beaches
and this ocean
ceaseless power
the rock mass
unadorned
save by itself.
Where creek meets ocean
who can say
which sound is louder
in the ear?
Here I extend
to sun, sand, sea---
I stroll, scratch belly,
dig my toes in gravel
and declare
there is no heaven
unless
it is here and
we are there
b. weidel CA 60
ROMANCE WITH A ROOM
Old shabby room, smoke stained, cobwebbed,
the room I've lived in for so
many years.
memorized your brightness (as you once
were)
sun-lit windows (thick with dust now)
I remember walking on your rugs
warm before your fire.
(was I shy then?
sounds came through thin walls
or frightened then,
at doors that have no locks?)
Yet I remember the soft light of the
lamp
(a broken lamp shade, did I notice?)
and the table that held wine and cheese
(was it so wobbly then?)
He wanted to know does she want another
pillow
(her inaudible answer was no)
if she needed his sweater
(her barely heard answer was no)
and he talked mostly in questions
did she want this or that
(her answers a murmur)
and he was apologetic
(her voice in my dreams a night sound)
Old shabby room, bodies collide here
emotions do their tango in my brain.
Take me back to the night you first
held me
shy and in love and free---
free of ambiguity
in this old shabby room.
b. weidel ca 70s
LEAF METAPHOR
As leaves on trees, we come and go,
our colors yellow, green or red,
our shapes and sizes
oval, pinnate, round.
We dance on the breeze,
we rustle in the wind,
we shade plants below.
As leaves we bud,
burst forth on limbs,
unruffle into space
create a canopy
As leaves we hover
through hot summers
together make a place
in which birds hide.
In autumn
all this service ends
and we let go our hold on life
crisply carpet grasses
or gather in gutters
stomped by boots
burned in bonfires.
Who knows which leaf
was first or last
or in what sequence they became
part of this great canopy
somehow it doesn't matter as
together they salute the day
crowning with great mastery
inborne, inbred,
the complex of
a root, a trunk, a branch---
and don't forget, the leaf
that is
the tree.
b weidel 10.31.06
THE LADY AND THE MINSTREL
an old style ballad
The lady stood tall in her red
velvet shoes
And looked at the shore still comforting
close.
A young man was watching and waved
from below.
As the ship set to sea she could
feel the wind blow.
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
I have loved and have lost you to
sail the wide sea.
The lady looked long after waving
goodbye.
The lady wiped tear after tear from
her eye.
But sailed she to Cairo, to Athens
and Rome,
Then to Ireland and London, before
she came home.
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady,
sang he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
There is none that I love that won't
come back to me.
Full seven years floated the lady
at sea
Till one day she landed, blushed
and turned pale.
The young man was waiting, outstretched
his hand,
And she took it smiling as she stepped
back on land.
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady,
sang he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
Doe-rye didly-ay-doe, my lady, sang
he,
There is none that I love that is
wiser than thee.
weidel 60.61
AT THE WEAPON STATION
voices whisper
wind warbles in the eaves
batters at the glass
bends the silk oak to its knees
we lift bright banners, red and blue,
on which is lettered
'U.S.OUT EL SALVADOR"
our big demands against big men
blue helmeted patrols
who protect the bombs from us
you and me and the protestors
one by one gone limp in their gloved
hands
and overhead the lima-bean shaped helicopters
churn
chewing up blue sky and shooting down
our helium-filled balloons.
I am afraid and so I hide
behind the cross I carry
and I stand
in the middle of these bodies wondering
when
what we came here for will happen
if it will happen
and what is the meaning of the ritual
both sides have planned:
this yellow line, the line.
this 4 foot barrier, the gate.
we will not this and that
all planned for days before.
and we arrive and stand and then
go home to wait and wonder
will the afternoon of terror and remorse
be on t.v. or in the paper?
will they share our news with
the rest of the people who live here
or with anyone else in the world?
or will it pass
as so many events of our lives pass
lost in a sea of events
swilling endless, forever, in time.
b. weidel
THE AIRMAN
There's naught but waves within, without
there's only darkness in the sky
and just a stone to call my heart
there's nothing I can name.
The sounds are not the sounds I knew
his voice at dinner, footsteps on the
floor,
not his, the silence that surrounds
me,
nor the absence at the door.
There's only songs I can't remember,
touch and smell the first to go,
this letter and a tarnished medal
and a number we can show
b. weidel 1.24.06
ARNESON'S BENCH
Your sculpture in mute insolence
outdoes my voice, except I live.
Is that I wonder, such great stuff
when you, like Henry Moore, take space
and wrap it round your resting place?
In all this glitz
of condos, boats and yacht club, you
have no mortgage as you watch
the foot of 1st Street
and you hear
the strident call of every valley train
Its like a Ryder painting how
dark furrows on your brow are lit.
Are you emerging from the brick
or like an Arab buried live
or like some mythic Greek that you admired
stationed to sustain
an irony
eternally?
How male of you to make
an existential monument like this
to take a perfect place in town
to watch through night and day
what passes by
where everyone who sees you can
wonder who you are.
To listen every day
for crickets, cicada, gull and seal,
the frogs, train whistles, and to watch
colors changing on the water.
Listening now to all the sounds
given to you as a child
pondering the straits
and this swift tide.
And what about the children
who run up, crouch down, confront you
nose to nose
plunge fingers in your eyes and ears
measure their growth to your finger
prints?
or the family of four who perch beside
the duck
silhouetted together on the ark
and thus are
balanced on your brain
dogs barking in the wilderness
and the wide sky watching, motionless.
did you ever, even, imagine?
b. weidel 8.11.96
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE
THE RAIN
There is nothing like the rain
nothing you can name
there is nothing like the rain
do you recognize this refrain?
On a day that is wet
who can forget
the sunshine in Spain
on the plain, in the rain?
And who would deny
the grass and the tree
lift up to be
glorious in the rain?
I remember the drain
in the Iowa street
where we floated our boat
in the rain
And the walk off to school
in Oregon winter
soaking wet with our boots
made to slosh and splash in rain
How the air smells so clean
when the water first falls
how the colors are bright
washed by rain
And no bird or flower
can resist a light shower
of rain as it winds
into rivers and streams.
There is nothing like the rain
hi-de-ho, hum-de-dum
I love walking in the rain
I like everything in the rain.
b. weidel
112505
CHIFFON
Only when you wake
one arm lifted toward the ceiling
does your skin have the look
of wrinkled chiffon
the bark of a tree
prune folds
crepe paper
Crepe paper tells it best
the visual, familiar
communicating more
yet I prefer chiffon
a textile of the dance
an elegance in women's dress
rich and dearly paid for.
Shirred skin over the arm
a curtain on the stage
between sleeping and waking
when for that moment only
I am chiffon
loosely wrapt
over muscle and bone
dressed for the dance
b, weidel 5. 05
I AM A
SINGLE SEASON
Summer I never loved
being at war between
want and obligation
wondering if I deserve
the fruit of this
have I to miss warm
days
waking without alarms
tracing the lines of
green willow
lying on sunlit grasses
the plum prolific,
the rose cane
bent with blossom?
I am a single season
emersing myself in
winter
as I do an August pool
flooding my skin with
schedules
flexing my limbs
in paperwork and routine.
I shall suppose in December
the black and white
of my ancestor
is a seashore to be
explored:
day upon day my peers
defined in summer metaphors
a grammar of the garden
in proliferation of
years
in drought of separation
in tillage of fears.
I shall experience summer
in a harvest of winter-dark
ways
and respond, as seed,
to the nurture
of a cool, wet season
reaching deep to survive.
b. weidel
9277
IN DIALOGUE
I write by day
you write by night
and you believe
that night is right
what makes the moon
by daylight seem
lost to view, or makes the sun
seem moon to few?
Some god, I wonder
spared you day
and spared me night
for all of that I love the light.
I wonder would a star conspire
to dwarf the sun and moon
and in that fire turn night to day
and day to night, forever one, forever
bright
So we, my friend, as opposites
meet face to face a mirror to our difference:
a morning/evening just begun
in this day/night continuum.
b. weidel 2199
EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED
ME TO BE
I am a collector
of diamond rings
of uncut sapphires
and jade carved things,
a correct statitician
a painter in oils
four times bilingual,
adept at the foils.
I have shelves of books
I read prodigiously.
I have reams of paper
and write creatively.
I keep my fingers busy
with needlework or clay
and manage time to take a walk
in early hours each day.
I call on friends precisely
allowing one half hour
I garden and I cultivate
both vegetable and flower.
I am tender, I am gentle,
I do not bite or sting.
I am near perfection
in the ballet
and I sing.
B Weidel 60
FOR MABLE WHO SINGS
HEAVEN
IN HER SLEEP
what agonies to re-create
the mind of an initiate
persuade the self, deliberate
with arguments inebriate
Quest, what ever drives us on
the one and only on and on
sweet blessedness, the impotence
of nothing finished, nothing done.
Pursue the goals of parenthood
my young, their life, the only good
given: essential questery---the
plank,
the tooth, the horn, the hood
clerestoried dome, lazuli leaf--
crooked-neck of painters who look up
to paint a vault. O shameless,
vocalizing hen,
croak instance, effort, anything but
whup.
b weidel 31-64
AFTER WATCHING SKATERS,
SKIERS AND
HEARING A POET READ
Our
many lives anonymous
As autumn leaves fly past and are
too numerous to itemize
Who is to say better than you
Which song to sing or word withhold
Hand to clasp, banner to carry?
You are, he said, your own direction.
You are, he said, perfection
But then, who would have thought
My dear, our lives could speak
Such eloquence
Or that the years between us range
A testament to ignorance.
Impartial as the snow my love
To blanket all that grows.
Or as the water of our dream
Fills in deep pools in darkest caves,
Who ventures there in night review
Remembers less than I or you.
So is the gift of love
A fragile little tune
Played briefly by the stars
Danced nightly on the moon.
Bonnie Weidel 2-92
FROGS
First frog I ever saw, that I remember,
I caught up in my hand and held it
cold and wet, eyes popping.
Carried it up the meadow to the house
kept it in a can.
Frogs kept jumping as we walked
the edge of the marshy place
cattails above us
and the farm sitting high up
back on the hill.
The artist who does frogs
must live out where I do
at night the ground
alive with frogs you never see
during the day.
When you live with frogs
you echoe frogs.
I think we can agree
the net is the same mesh
for the frog or for me.
We sing the same night
We swim in the same pond
we breath the same air
like millions before us
we share
b. weidel 9/80
INCOMPATIBLE PLANTS
For as we started out to share
the garden space, and we did sow
what we both needed and would dream
upon,
and then we grew together and remained
growing familiar to the place---
not that the branching vines
could not bear both of us, or roots
sustain,
it wasn't that, as we inclined
individually to bloom,
to bear our fruit or were compelled
to stem and leaf, to wholly green
completion of each other, no.
Instead of tendrils twined
in mutual support
self-strangling, so we grew
scorched and withered and deprived
of what we needed to become and moving
toward
whatever beyond ourselves we cannot
know
toward which we all
so fiercely, blindly, grow.
c) b. weidel
26-81
These Hands
These hands are power
like any flower
they open and close
can impose
ritual and rhyme.
They cleave the air
soft petaled forms
they fold
they perfume space
they carve a walrus from a whale bone
seagull from a stone
these hands bring messages
of many textured ways
teach my nerves
I see through hands
I find new words to write
that's where my country starts
when all the senses gather in like bees
gathered to the hive
my brain alive
and there, together, we
work and live
we fester
we survive.
19-69 (c) b. weidel
She talked, she talked
she talked, she talked and I talked
we talked as though we must relive
each moment of our lives, as though
it mattered what she said or what I
said
as though we must lay bare
all of our experience, as though
it mattered to us what each other knew
or had known.
She talked, she talked
and I took note of what she wore
and how her hair hung round her face
and how her brown eyes were intense
as if she knew it all, she spoke as
if
she had outlived me, had great wisdom
and I talked of things long past me,
long ignored.
she talked and I talked until somehow
we agreed
it was a time to be silent. The
chairs were put in place,
cups set in the sink. We hugged
and held each other close
and then we said goodnight. The
stars were bright
and the air was cold as I drove home
through the dark.
June 21, 2002 Ó
B. Weidel
After watching Streep
and Redford
in Out of Africa
for I was born of movies
living their lives, speaking their speech,
wearing their clothes.
some books read so often I believed
the characters to be myself. I
ran with Heidi on the hill,
wept over beads with Elsie D.
lived in trees with Tarzan
sat on my steed full armored with Gawain.
I knew who I was, each day I stood
wrapped in the pages of my life
no wonder where the future is
no future save the written word
What matters is what we do
in daily turns at daily table
as we walk our rounds
that we can walk,
that we are able.
II
The sounds are rolling waves on rise
as movies ebb and flow, collide,
I die in a cave, smothered in a dark
despair,
or stare into the helpless eyes
of children we knew long ago.
I know
the deep is rising up to cast some secret
on the page, it rolls, it rolls, it
spills. And I
am spun like driftwood on its wave,
these words, these ways, these timeless
tales
caught from a single spinner's web
made up of movies and the books I read
Poor Joshua, when the walls fell
down
and all that power turned to dread
b. weidel April
18, l997
SONG
I am free
I am free
as a bird or a bee
I dance on my toes
and follow my nose
wherever it goes
I am free
B. Weidel 1956
I WASN'T THERE TO SAY
GOODBYE
I wan't there to say goodbye
to hold your hand
to kiss you
smooth your brow
I wasn't there to witness pain
your breathing slow
your closed eyes looking elsewhere
unable to follow
I am here now though
folding and sorting
packing up scraps of your being
sharing your thoughts as never before
this ribbon, crayon, ruler
part of intentions, life continuum.
I am doing what I can
packing you up
touching what you had touched
looking with my eyes at a shape you
saw
saving the best for your box
attentive as never before
to the way you left a curtain knotted
to let in the sun.
2004 B. Weidel
Parting with a book
edited by a friend
I do not own you and have never
do not care to
our lives so different
death so final
we walked on different spheres
breathed air unlike
we spoke in rooms so unfamiliar.
still
it is hard to give you up
as if
your book is you and we
have shared a life, held a tryst
turning each page with you as you wrote
it
savouring each word, as you mouthed
it,
running my fingers over the cover
sharing a life it is hard to say
goodbye to
12/18/96 B. Weidel
CHRISTMAS TREE
I don't think I will trim this tree
miraculous as anything can be
and everyday of any year
remarkable to see.
To think for years I stayed
up late alone to stare
at the bright lights upon the tree
as if the tree weren't there.
12/27/03 B. Weidel
WHAT DO YOU WEEP FOR
What do you weep for, Mother?
I weep for the white of the snow.
And why do you sit here, Mother?
Because it is time to go.
And what is that scarlet ribbon
that you smooth over your knee?
The blood of so many millions,
My heredity.
on occasion of brita's retirement from
busd
threads bind us
live as tapestries
in unexpected revelations
mind and feeling are
dimensional in metaphor
as needlepoint design made one
by and through small stitches
so do we become
the warp and weft
of every hand and mind encountered
so when helena asks me
on occasion of her mom's retirement
to do a scrapbook page
of my time with Brita
I have only to reweave
our years of interaction
memories and projects
hopes and cares
I think
of the 1980 census
of green apple trees
of birch forests in moscow
of the isthmus of panama
of victorian houses built by kids
of indian baskets
in a trunk at the camel barn
of garage sales with six pointed stars
of leaves and grasses woven into webs
at arts in the park
of benicia beaches
the meandering willow glen creek
and
of a table for bird talk at the flyway
and I will remember that
friendships are strands of our lives
woven into
blankets for our cold spells
rugs to protect our bare feet and
baskets to hold what we cherish.
these strands make up
the fabric of our lives
share and enrich the community we value
layer upon layer, year on year.
B. Weidel 2004
b. weidel may 2004
ROAD KILL
9/7/03
Poor baby possum
stuck on the road
hit by some truck
with a heavy load.
Head goes this way,
feet go that.
You stick in my mind
like a thermostat.
Road 's too wide
for your small feet--
you move too slow
for this fast street.
I'm meditatin'
on you, hon,
as thousand others
like me have done,
drivin fast
the radio playin.
I forget for a moment
what I was sayin. |
|
TODAY'S SUN
I thought of the seagull
and the poem
and my unnatural speech.
How easy in feather or velvet to tell
about the way of birds.
How in Seattle
there was sun and water
and my cat Egypt;
how in Benicia
there was sun and water
and my cat Toby.
As day and night,
them black and white,
and in this sun
freshwater,
Virginia Woolf and me.
The only sensible danger
found in the present tense
from seagulls flying overhead
and the child's voice
born by the wind
sounding like the call
of my cat.
b weidel
CINCO DE MAIO
Gulls that are not gulls (he said)
flap white wings like china painted
porcelain
are not, because he said so, gulls
since gulls do not fly inland
still for me they cluck and cry
broadcast from above in nowhere-blue
and like a gull with eagle eye
swoop up to see
if any bird that stands is real
while smooth layered waves
break on the mossy debris of the rocky
shore.
I'd like to paint these towns
Vallejo's row of boxes
lined up on the banks of Southampton
Bay
Port Costa houses crawling up a conical
hill
and miniatures, that you can barely
see
across the water, through the haze,
a train that winds four miles beside
the strait
through fog and sun and rain.
Today a baby robin plays about the dock
where pilings serve as resting spots
for each short fligh.
One time it tries a jutting rock
and as I sit here like a buddha wrapt
in thought,
the sweat rolls down my fat middle class
brow,
drips down my dimpled back.
b weidel
WHEN YOU WALK UPON
THE MOON
I watched them walk upon the moon
or so they said it was
but not as I remembered
not white enamel
nor satin lustre
nor did they step into
the hollow of his cheek
or fall into
the crater of his eye.
they walked upon the moon
the camera said
but not the moon i know
not that old face
who has for centuries been
the one we look to
illuminated in the dark
from whom we expected
answers.
somehow they took the truth from me
leaving instead
a rock, and dust.
a wilderness, a lonely place
that spins in silence
and has no face.
bweidel 8/3/87
IT WOULD TAKE TIME
There was, he said, a place where all
the understanding would be true
a place where we confront the day
where we would all hold hands
and pray.
There was, he told me, people there
who would be kind, who would be ready
to bend like wheat in windy fields
and yet stand steadfast, holding on
to what they knew.
There was, he smiled, a wilderness
where every one of us could bring
our songs, our words, our tables and
chairs,
intent on reconstructing there
what we remembered.
There was, he sighed, a tendency
for each of us to bring too much
to overplan, I think he said,
so that, however fast we ran,
it would take time.
b. weidel 11.17.06
RIPE PLUMS
Plums are more purple
on boughs
too high to reach,
on twigs
too slender to climb.
Like you and I
plump in our prime--
red, green or blue.
Sweet plums
like Frost and Thomas knew--
dumb human selves
hung up on limbs
no one could dare,
the objects of
no fruitful need--
just tantalizing
hanging
there.
b. weidel 69
HE TOOK MY HEART AND
THEN MY BRAIN
He
took my heart and then my brain
my studio, my car, my art.
I stood on marble block
remote and white.
He sang.
He sang in many tongues
he sang in miracles of
green
and I stood still to listen.
I am not in a Minneapolis
kitchen
statue on a footstool
surrounded by make-believe
Indians.
Nor am I the girl in the
Brown Palace
raped by the captain no
one defies.
This is not the green hut
under currant bushes
across from the elementary
school
where six baby girls
pay penny dues. No.
This is the middle of his
street
and I am a traffic light
blinking at no one
red
green red green
red
I perform on cue.
I am wired to perform on
cue.
B. Weidel 7.28.94
Bonnie Weidel ART FOR KIDS
940 Tyler Street, Studio 5
Benicia CA 94510
707.745.5788
TALK TO ME WIND
Talk to me wind,
Where have you been?
Talk to me wind;
Why are you here?
How do you find me?
here in these walls
what do you look for
what do you find?
Why do you whisper?
what do you moan
what do you sigh for
where will you go?
Talk to me wind
I wait for your answer
what do you tell me
talk to me wind.
b. weidel 11.8.06
I'LL LEAVE YOU
I'll leave you in the morning
when the stars fade
and the wind dies
and the sun has not yet risen
but almost
I'll sleep with you----hold you
cling to you----yearn for you---
say your name,
memorize your softness
and
the lay of bone, hair, brow---
I'll leave you then
when the stars fade
when the wind dies
when the sun has not yet risen
but almost
b weidel
10.20.74
MY TOBY CAT
Toby sleeps out--
our separate ways
constant as the waves that rush
the dock, the fishing rocks,
the drain.
My painting and my poetry
are not risk taking--
not as he--
who risks the darkness
every night.
Toby, for whom the dark is
milieu, an environment
in which he thrives.
b. weidel
HOT SUMMER GRAVES
Hot summer graves we water
and up like weeds
spring ghosts
ancestors all
arise green garbed
with battle cries
there goes the wave,
next wave, and more
deluged and drunk
fed by our bones
the fertilizers of
our love.
Fat seeds
held in the earth's fat hand
sprout every hour, each day, each year,
and is it earth or our hot breath
provides the milieu, nourishment?
Good little graves,
snug, tagged and mown
like flowers in a greenhouse grow
good little graves
in tidy row..
b. weidel
IN FEBRUARY
If things get blurry
and you can't see
how life is
supposed to be
Remember summer
and seeds that grow
until they become
the plants we know.
b. weidel 2.9.6
TO DO
It wouldn't do he said and then
I said it had to do but then
we both agreed if it could do
then we would do what we could do.
So then we asked what could we do
and it was what we had to do
if only we could figure out
what it was we had to do.
Then we ran out of time to do
the things we thought we had to do
and so he said that it would have to
do
as long as we did what we do.
b. weidel 1.24.06
THE NIGHTMARE
I raise my sons
those tender hearts
their vital parts
so vulnerable.
What is the art
of self-defense?
a fig, a self delusion?
My little one, he screams.
I clasp him tight.
We are more one
than in prenatal state.
And as he sobs
I smooth his hair
I croon in his ear
I am here, I am here
and I know as I do
I am there.
b. weidel
9.28.65
ZACHARY'S POEM
My hero
is the American soldier
Fulfilling his dream
A dream to protect his nation
My hero is the American soldier
Fulfilling a dream he may not believe
Fulfilling Bush’s dream
A dream to spread Democracy through
killing
My hero is the American soldier
Who wonders every day, “Is this my
last?”
Who wonders every day, “Is this right?”
Tormented by the memories left
behind
NOVEMBER 2005(By one
of Bonnie's grandsons ZAC LEETE CONNELL)
JANE
Good morning glory so
she said
every morning when
you walked
into the kitchen wondering
whether
there was food you
want to eat.
She had been up for
hours
sitting at the table
done her nails with
warm oil
to keep the ragged
cuticle neat
and worked the crossword
puzzle
not a word left out.
She was an expert at
her tasks
left for work at 7.
November 5 her
birthday.
is the day we vote
and so I think of her
as I stand in the voting
booth
how we never could
discuss
sex or money or crass
politics.
She voted secretly
and never told
whether she supported
Roosevelt or Dewey
Eisenhower
Kennedy or Goldwater
She was taken from the
arms
of her sleeping drunken
father
learned how to live
with two brothers
and a single mom.
Snagged at 17
in a kind of shotgun
wedding
she and her highschool
sweetheart
crossed the plains
during the depression
inside three years
she was alone
mother of two children
and two unborn
miles from family and
childhood dreams.
My stepdad used to advise
me
don't mind her ways.
She loves you only
doesn't know how to
say
today is momma's birthday,
almost a century past.
Of her daughters, I
am the only and the last.
b. weidel
11505
MAMA
She lay for hours one elbow propped
pulling on a cigarette
every drag closing down
one more vein, one millimeter more
of calcium to clog the flow
of blood to the brain.
We were never there
while she lay night in and out
smoking and dozing
watching the clock for
the 5 a.m. dawn.
We never held her hand
or lay down beside her
to stay her fear
and as it grew
the ashtray filled.
"blood pressure 110/175" "200/110"
the day it went "200/190"
she never spoke again
nor saw us when we came to cry
nor felt us hold her
rigid, no longer restless, hand.
b. weidel 113076
THE FAN
I was lying on the couch
thinking that I had
begun
to like my little house
I stared at the shadow
of the ceiling fan
if only the fan were
moved
I could see the shadow
better.
But if I move the fan
there will be no shadow
the shadow
goes with the fan
So I looked again at
the fan
and considered
that it has five
appendages
like a star fish
or maybe, like
a human being
who is sky diving
with arms and legs
spread out to catch
the wind
b. weidel 92605
THE SONG OF CHRISTOPHER
Let the wild wool burn in the sky,
For the earth is sheared of a
white lamb.
Let the slow crystal of spring burn,
For the river parts and consumes the
land.
Let the burnt stone rejoice in fire,
For the sun dances a face on the water.
Let the cherry bough burn, and the cherry
blossom,
For the cherry decays, for the seed
dies.
Let the pear burn, and the pear blossom,
For the pear is golden, and sand is
golden.
Let the grapevine burn, and the grape
blossom,
For the vine is green as the dust lies
on it.
Let the wheat turn white, and the harvest
turn,
For the table was bare and now is laden.
Let the hay turn yellow, and the thresher
turn,
For the pleasure of man is a pitchfork
to heaven.
Let the thistle turn purple, and the
clover turn white,
For the thistle and clover will lie
together.
Let the first white signal of fall burn,
For the red and the white are in one
flag.
Let the second season of summer burn,
For the rake has gathered a bird from
flight.
Let the third white flake of winter
burn,
For the first with the last is aureoled.
Let the lambs cheer for the wild wool,
For the shearing of hairs is a fine
endeavor.
Let the ashes bear forth a clucking
hen,
For the song of noon is the loudest
song.
Let the cows return when time returns,
For the bucket is full when it runs
over.
B Weidel
Published in 10th Mentor Selection of
New
World Writing, November, 1956
IT WAS IN SUMMER
LIGHT TO KNOW
It was in summer light to know
and breathed of silks and gossamer
waving at us as we passed
our autos groaning to overtake
the hills, the plains, the sun, the
moon----
it shown upon us, as eye of god,
illuminating all we saw,
giving in its wonder, awe,
and insight to the tenuous---
the ever reaching, tempting us
to nod and sigh,
as kissing for one moment, we
thought we knew it and could say
without a whimper or retreat,
I love you.
B. Weidel 121095
THE DOORS
I do not like to know the door is closed
that I can never open it again.
I say I can't believe this
I want to say I won't believe this
but I do deeply know the door is closed.
I open doors. He closes doors.
He closes the windows. I open
the windows.
We pass each other in the dark hallway
moving in opposite directions.
We see the white walls with different
cones.
I wonder as we pass if he wonders
of the resistance we feel
though we do not speak of resistance
and how we live together
so opposed
simply over windows
to open or close
and doors
to close or open.
bweidel 1985
(on momma's death)
THE WORLD HAS TURNED
Like that
the earth has turned
a leaf
and new year formed
a bud on twig.
a clumping cabbage
just become
as of my life
a book, pages past
and present, future.
Ask
what was the world
without our measure?
A sea of grasses
to be counted?
a thread without beginning,
without end?
Without our time
and its own seasons,
sun or moon?
And yet we ask
how many winters
still to number?
How many leaves unfold?
B. Weidel 1/3/94
HESTER PRINN
She wore the letter A with modesty
blazoned on her breast a value
she could turn her back on,
lean on in hard times.
She knew in narrow ways
what she had done and could not,
knew her people's praise,
could repeat their rules.
Hester didn't wander the streets
wondering who to oppose,
asking who was in charge,
seeking a cause to defend.
She rose every morning dressed
for action: the letter A for able
for beginnings
for adulterous woman
choosing to be
herself.
b. weidel 4/79
ME AND MY GOD
Whenever I see water fall
I see the spires of God
whenever I see atmosphere
blue as the eyeballs of my son
I see God
Blue as the bowl of Chinese clay
or when I touch camelias
breath violets deeply, touch
fireplace ashes, stir piney bubbles
in my bath I see God
When I light candles, when I frost the
cake
bend over a book, drink coffee
I have no need to hallucinate
snug as two peas in a pod
me and my God
bweidel, to Ian, 1965
SONNET TO HIM
Beloved alabaster king
the sun annoints limned bones
that Michelangelo would envy
and Donatello realize
hands manicured by use
the moon sits on your thumb.
Your lines the Elgin marbles emulate
and Greek Apollos your blue eyes.
What god, if god exists, could
take
a form like yours and men make?
What idea, o god-ideator, led you
to shape me, so that I could perceive
these lineaments, these ligatures, these
genes
that bound together equal him?
Or form me---that my female brain
can open up and this man-shape enclose?
O brilliant god, you even gave
his nose
the beak of the eagle and you provided
him
with ten fingers and ten toes.
b. weidel
1/75
OLD SUPER DUCK
Old super duck she waddles when she walks
says quack quack when she talks
lays an egg to fill your palm and fixes you
with bright and shining eyes.
Super duck swims on the pond with ease
sails out before her young and don't look back
below the waterline, her feet in motion
with a rhythm you got least notion of.
That super duck, all awkward in her grace
whose orange and bony mouth is all her face
can flap a wing and set a storm
of pond water flying in her place.
Her downy young trail in a line behind
set sail as sure as she. Small wonder, for
they float and maneuver marshes just as she
they waddle when they walk
say quack quack when they talk and fix you
with their bright and shining eyes.
b. weidel 22 -64
MY TURN
I'm watching
as the world goes by.
Here, inside my bowl am I,
looking at the sun, the trees,
houses, birds, sailboats and ferries.
Clouds and kids, the seasons, love
Words I have no notion of
All going past
Cars on a freeway.
Roaring past me
till at last
I feel my feet lift and I too
am rushing past
you, and you, and you.
5/14/05 @ B. Weidel
STRING THEORY
If stars turn to strings
I will not know it
if you come back to visit
this planet as an atom
I won't know it---
if you find me in a flower
or in some waterway
I won't tell you that you found me.
You have to trust me
as we've never trusted
have to see me
as you've never seen me
as we are not
so they like to say
we'll be.
4/12/05 c/ b. weidel
LINES
The wide sky is apricot
the far hills are raspberry
this is a fruit bowl world
I know no other
A blanket is not woven of one thread
a forest not formed of one tree
neither should you ask of me
to walk one path, sing one song, wear
one shoe.
10 -21-96 (c) b. weidel
On the Dunes with Ian
Part of this pattern
we sit on a cotton blanket
rescued from Jim's room after he died.
We picnic on Greek salad and chicken
our breathing measured by each ocean
wave.
Ian says the ocean is relentless
without pause, without count.
I never heard it roar when we sailed
I only remember the splash against the
hull
and the waves that broke behind us.
Here on the dunes, however, ocean
drowns our speech.
Who can compete as those long-needle
pines with twisted silver trunks
who stand like sentinels and know
silence can be song.
7/22/02 Ó B. Weidel
POETRY: 1/7/92
he is in his own space
listening to the murmur of his own
refrigerator
gauging his breath against
the freeway roar
if he lifts his eyes
he can see the lights
of San Francisco and
the framework of the Bay Bridge
a neon horizon.
and I feel my space
gathering around me
the loose nets mending again
where his presence rent them
the dust creeping slowly
onto the floor space
where his mat was
where his clothes lay
for three weeks
where his books were placed
in my space
slowly to heal itself
as we have done this many times before
even this morning
facing the polar bear in my dream
I folded the blankets
ready to reclaim them
wrapt in the solitude
we share
I sit waiting for
the fabric to retie itself
but I shall be active too
to straighten, lift, touch, dust,
and as I do
he will be cocooned in
his new space
a world I am not a part of
in time I cannot measure
in his world
LISTEN
I hear the wind howl
and I listen
I hear the door rattle
and I listen
I hear the motor of the frig
hum and rumble
and I listen.
This is not Maya Angelou
listening to voices
of elders and children
nor Walt Whitman listening
to leaves of grass
this is what I listen to
alone in my cell
in the late night
of the 20th century
I hear the wind howl
and I listen
I hear the door rattle
and I listen
I hear the motor of the frig
hum and rumble
and I listen.
B. Weidel
EVEN GULLS GO QUIET
Even gulls go quiet
after years of crying
circling empty beaches
wither on the wind.
Molten as the sea wall seems
gulls have learned to read its face
know the dimples and the dots
wherein fat morsels hide or not.
I walk beneath them, these white feathers
seem as predators, so I shrink
into the seashell, under the sealog,
their authority I believe.
SKEET SHOOTER
These spinning discs
I shoot them down;
I shoot them down
upon the ground.
I shoot them down
and there they stay
and then another
spins away.
And then another
after that;
the world is full;
the world is fat.
The world is spinning
fat like that
white disc spinning:
splat.
1985
On Visual and Visceral Experience
Listening to Firebird Suite, Stravinsky
this I remember having begun in 2002
after I have learned to float
on the pool surface
spread like a star
my face lifted toward the sky
looking into the bowl of space
sometimes with the moon
sometimes in the midst of many stars
always supported by the water
below me beside me
this I experienced listening to Stravinsky
so he drifted toward his death
sinking lower and lower
into the light and luminous
gauzy layers of centuries
as rivers flowing
quietly forward and he,
carried by them,
his body weighing
less than air as he
drifted into his own being
no longer separate from
the atmosphere which bore him.
9/4/03
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