Poem of the Day

ingenue

Today's word is

ingenue

Here's another word I prefer to issue forth with as heavy and authentic a French accent as I can muster.  It's a word I've only heard used in dramatic circles or by extremely snide or snobbish people, and I only say it myself when I'm parodying that type of person.  I sort of feel like it should sound exclusive, like something the person saying it had to be trained to pronounce properly.

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
Still doing my big brain dump, a week late.  Pardon the delay.

This is just a draft, and I'm not quite sure whom it's about -- partly me, sure, but some of the girls I grew up with and many of the women I've known since, more likely. 

Were you ever an ingenue?

As much as we giggled,
I can never say I was, or if I was,
when I could have been.

There was no time.
There was no money, and all my strength
had somewhere else to be.

Lessons came, bidden and not,
with just one chance to learn, one shot
to get each one right.

Failure would be absolute. 
This was always understood. With no "do-overs," naïveté
quickly got lost.

anodyne

Today's word is

anodyne

Oh, looky here:  a word that is both an adjective and a noun.  Well, that's something new for us to play with.

*****
Monday, November 28, 2005
Sorry, folks.  I had to step away for awhile.  Too pooped.  Now I have a blissful morning with no company except my cat and a soft grey sky, so I can do a brain dump here and then desultorily attend to some other chores.  Hope it was all worth the wait.

First, a little haiku:

anodyne for dark
months looming, a cardinal
amid bare branches

While driving to work the day before Thanksgiving, almost a week after I wrote this, I heard a beautiful piece on NPR wherein the host Tom Ashcroft discusses with its author Graeme Gibson a new book for which to lust called The Bedside Book of Birds.  During the program, Gibson reads a nice poem he included by Alberto Manguel (sp?) about a cardinal the poet sees out his window which then leads his mind into an inquiry about words -- and birds -- as symbols. 

Mmmm...synchronicity.  My mind has kind of been going in that direction lately anyway as I contemplate what makes a poem comprehensible to others, how much you have to know -- and what kinds of things you have to know -- to understand a poem, any poem.  How much do you have to know to fully grasp something by Eliot vs. something by Dickinson, for example?  Will education help you with the latter?  Will your spirituality help you with the former?

Hardly in the same league with either, of course, I still wonder with every word I use whether it will be understood and how.  When I put the name of a type of plant (a brunnera, for example) in a poem, if you don't know what a brunnera is, do you lose the sense of the poem?  If you don't know what winter in a land of long winters and deciduous forests looks like, can you feel this haiku?  What if you've never seen a cardinal except on Christmas stamps, as was my case before living here?  Will you even know what you aren't getting?  And does that matter?

This is one of those things I drive myself nuts over -- and yet another reason to spread knowledge of words, right?   Words are inherently weak -- so much vagueness and misinterpretation possible.  Look, even this fairly straightforward word, "anodyne," can be either a noun or an adjective.  Goodness.  If you can't trust a word even to be the same kind of word from reading to reading, how can you trust it to say what you mean from eye to eye, ear to ear?  How much do we ever really say to each other?  What do we say that doesn't come through?  What do we say that we didn't know we'd said?

And actually, does spreading the knowledge of words, one by one, actually alleviate any of this or just make it worse?

I'll probably never know.  I'll just keep plodding along anyway.  Cheers!

lambent

Today's word is

lambent

An elegant, tasty word, and another I read but do not use.  Well, no time like the present to start, I guess.

*****
Monday, 12:15 p.m.
Something I've been thinking about for a long time, and of course I think about it more at this season than any other.

In Eastern Massachusetts

In Eastern Massachusetts,
I lived in one place five years
before the first trick-or-treaters
ever rang my bell.

In Eastern Massachusetts,
I used to entertain myself
while riding the train into town
by complimenting strangers
on what they were wearing.
If they weren't from here,
they'd thank me, and we'd converse.
If they were local natives,
they'd look at me suspiciously,
smile as small as they possibly could,
and move away as soon as seemly.

In Eastern Massachusetts,
I have discovered
that the only way I will ever be
permitted to offer kindness
to strangers
is to work in retail.
I have my place,
behind this register,
and you have yours,
stranger,
on the other side.
You will speak to me;
I will speak to you;
you will come to me;
I will react in carefully trained,
prescribed patterns.
We have copious witnesses
for our every interaction.
Furniture embedded in the floor
separates you from any harm
which I, whom you don't know, could
possibly conceive of doing to you.
If I compliment your sweater,
you know I'm not going to
come over there and rip it
off of your shoulders.
Besides, you probably think
I'm only telling you I like it
to sell more twenty-dollar-a-pound
cheese (even though I have better ways
of doing that and really do
like your sweater).

I serve you and your whole family,
here, in Eastern Massachusetts.
Sometimes I remember the names and faces
of your children and parents,
which delights you.
Sometimes I don't, and that
disappoints you.
I live next door to you,
or just down the street,
and sometimes remembering that
startles you.
I will not go to Thanksgiving at your house.
You might come to my funeral, though,
and tell the people throwing it
how much you loved me.

Our transactions here in Eastern Massachusetts --
day by day, week by week, holiday by holiday,
life-changing event by life-changing event --
rush by in three-minute or shorter intervals,
hundreds for me every day,
one or two for you a week.
I see everything you buy,
and I know why you buy it,
why you choose the things you choose.

Here, at my register
in this store in Eastern Massachusetts,
I am paid for my efficiency and service, so
I try to make it fast for you, and
I try to make it painless for you.
I try to make you smile, though
just because I can.
I have wanted to for so long,
and now I can.

Here, in Eastern Massachusetts,
we are entwined, community,
but in such a lambent way,
based on so many separate hungers
deep and shallow.

rubicund

Today's word is

rubicund

Mmm, I like this word.  Makes me think of chubby cherubim, and other rosy, rotund creatures.  Unfortunately, it also makes me think of the Rubicon, and I do believe one or five people have already written about that.  Besides, what does that have to do with redness?  Did Caesar blush when he crossed it?

*****
Friday, 10:15 p.m.

Serendipity:
two free peach trees in November.

Apparently, saplings do not sell
once they lose most of their leaves
for the winter.

We had two left in Floral,
two dormant peach saplings,
each with just one or two rusty spears
clinging to its otherwise nude branches,
their color hinting at the promise
of sweet, rubicund globes
next summer.

They were past their profitability.
They had been written off.
I took them home to save them
from winter starving in a plastic pot
or the harsh reincarnation offered
by the compost bin.

One I will keep in a pot on my balcony.
One I will plant on the street.

An old Yankee woman down the street
who never smiles,
who ignores all greetings,
and who has a small dog
who yaps angrily at every stranger
who threatens to love her uninvited,
has a mature peach tree.

At one point near September,
it bent with the weight
of hundreds of green fruit.

One day,
as each youth-colored ball
was just beginning to blush,
my downstairs neighbor and I, separately --
on separate walks, at separate times of day --
each dared to compliment the owner
on her crop.
(We only found out during a later chat.)

She acknowledged
neither of us.
The next day,
the crop was gone,
apparently having
been harvested
in full,
in one day,
unripe.

There are only two reasons I know
to harvest an entire crop
of summer peaches
green.

The first is ignorance. 
Fruit separated from the tree too young
will never gain full sweetness
or nutritional value,
though it will soften
to a point of edibility.

This false ripeness is sold in stores
where fruit has been picked young far away
so that it might survive unbruised
its journey to distant locations
where such fruit is not grown
and people don't know
what it's supposed to taste like,
what summer sugar fresh from the earth and sun
is supposed to taste like,
how sweet, sun-warm juice is supposed
to burst out of tender, slightly fuzzy flesh,
and dribble down ecstatic summer chins,
onto fingers made for stickiness,
how generous summer fruit
is supposed to be.

The other reason,
of course,
is fear.

There's a lot to fear when you have
a burgeoning crop of summer peaches
about to come ripe.
Birds might get them.
Children might steal them.
Your neighbors might admire them,
and you might have to fear further
that they are not just happy
for your good fortune,
but actually might also be
expecting you
to share it with them.
On the other hand,
thirsting at the end of a dry season,
not having been given enough,
maybe they'll simply fall off
of their own accord
and rot on the ground.

I have nothing on this earth to fear.
I have been given two free peach trees,
in November.

I will pot one on my balcony.
I will plant the other on the street.

I do not know if they will bear.
If they bear,
I do not know if it will happen
while I still live here.
But if they bear, whenever they bear,
the birds and my neighbors can have their fill,
as can any passerby,
including the old Yankee woman down the street
and her angry fluffy dog,
should either find herself
wandering up the road this far
and feeling peckish.

prestidigitation

Today's word is

prestidigitation

Hmmm...again, not a word I use every day. This is all I could think of:

Shifting so fast,
it feels like a trick,
prestidigitation.

The season blooms quick,
then flies away on a
single warm storm,
nothing more than
a deck of colored cards
slipping hopelessly
through unseen fingers
to the wind.

kobold

Today's word is

kobold

This word is leering at me.  Make it stop. 

*****
Thursday (!!!), 1:30 p.m.
Right.  See the previous post for my excuses.  Meanwhile, here's what I wrote for this word. It's weak, but this is another one of those words I just don't use, so it inspired in me a poem I probably would not have written if I weren't desperately stretching for a place to put it. There's more I want to say about this subject sometime, maybe taking it further into the realm of gossip, which is a subject that kind of fascinates me, but not here, not now, and probably not using the word "kobold."

Oh, well, for what it's worth:

I cannot see the world from up here.
I am nothing powerful,
just an artist with a window.
I can only see the part of the world
that goes by on outbound trains,
feathered wings, or gossamer.

I don't know who sees me or when
or what I look like --
beaming blond girl-buddha?
dreaming Athene, she of the clever thoughts
and faraway grey eyes?

Ha!  Likely neither.
Likely just a pale smear reflected
in a window speeding by, an
impression of some anonymous
ornamental kobold, maybe,
a shelf knicknack
in someone else's night-lit house,
seen too quickly, if at all, to parse.

From here
as from most places,
I am the one looking,
and looking,
and looking again,
finding a place for everything I see,
not the one to be looked at,
not the one who needs to be made sense
of and put in a labeled spot
somewhere in someone else's
inner life.

That is most likely,
and just what I'd prefer.

aplomb

Today's word is

aplomb

Such a dashing word!  Makes me think of Errol Flynn. 

*****
Thursday (!!!), 1:00 p.m.
Seriously, right now this is not working out on a daily basis.  However, things are only temporarily mad.  I expect my posting to be more regular some weeks than others.  Next week is the second busiest of the food retail season, and since I work at Whole Foods, my posting here will be even spottier (if it exists at all) this coming Sunday through Wednesday.  Then things will probably get more regular until about the week of December 12, when my schedule will start to explode again and stay messed up until January.  Yoicks.

I have been writing the poems, though, just not posting them.  I've been away from the computer a lot.  Here's what I sketched out for this word:

I wonder what happened to him,
that guy who used to come in.
I haven't seen him in months.

He'd buy just one thing:
an even pound of fresh,
whole, habanero peppers.

He came in every week.
He'd plop the bag down
onto the belt with aplomb
and grin into my eyes.

Once, I asked him
what he did with them all.
He told me he roasted meat in them,
buried chops deep in the
flame-coloured mountain of them,
and roasted them until the oven fire
made the fire in the peppers
dance with the sugar in each
slab of dead muscle
until every capsaicine spark was encased
by burnt sugar, only to be discovered
and adored by his tongue.

He made that kissing motion
with lips and fingers
and closed his eyes
to indicate heaven.

So good, he said.  So good.

He was dark,
dark as sugar burnt all the way up.

I do wonder what happened to that guy.
I haven't seen him in months.

ebullient

Today's word is

ebullient

A wonderful, strong word.  Forthright.  Personable.  Joyful, even.

Have at it!

(Oh, and sorry that yesterday's word, diadem, was incorrectly linked.  All fixed now.)

*****
Tuesday (!!!), 11:15 a.m.
Goodness gracious, I am so behind.  Shall I blame Mercury in retrograde?  Shall I blame the full moon?  How 'bout the beginning of the holiday retail season?  How 'bout just my own fallibility?

Regardless, here's what I came up with for "ebullient" a couple of days ago:

Hunger drives the sparrow flock
to dance through the wind-tossed,
ice-edged finger fringe
of the evergreen hedge,
to ebullient motion
complicated like a square dance
but three-dimensional.

They bob and flit, flutter and dip,
squabble, settle, rearrange,
all except a core of nine.

The way poor old women
wrapped in black shawls
in other countries
glare at people to shame them
into behaving appropriately,
so the core of tiny nine glares at me
through this window.

They want those feeders filled, I guess.
I'd better fill those feeders.

diadem

Today's word is

diadem

Lucky, lucky me -- another word that I adore!  Maybe it's just a girls-love-jewelry thing, but seriously, don't you agree that this word is just made for poetry?

Enjoy!

*****
8:20 p.m.

The waitress laid down
two long-handled dessert spoons,
two gleaming implements of desire.

With a flourish of white linen
and whiter porcelain sparking reflections
off the silver and the tiny
halogen spotlights overhead,
she presented the crème brulée.

I sighed.
I did.

We waited for her to leave
the way one waits for
room service to leave
before digging into
a honeymoon breakfast.

I tapped my spoon lightly on the crust.
It did not crack. 
I pouted and tapped harder.
What should have been
the lightest diadem of burnt sugar
turned out to be armor
formed cunningly of brown glass.

My delicate implement of desire
became a pickaxe,
my fingers warrior arms. 
The armor pierced
with less grace than ice
on a frozen fishing lake.

Beneath should have been
a cloud both light and dense,
a universe of cream
and egg and vanilla,
opaque yet ephemeral,
airless yet weightless.

But it was just custard,
a little grainy
from unskilled mixing,
and not particularly flavorful.

I pouted more.
I did.

Then I looked at my love
and thought of our day.
The clumsily contrived custard
melted coolly away
off my tongue and down my throat.
The too-sweet,
too-sharp armor shards
were easily discarded.
I shut my eyes,
filled my mouth again,
felt the exquisite shock
of refrigerated cool
fade to my own heat,
remembered something else,
and smiled.

I am smiling now.
I am.

puissant

Today's word is

puissant

Oooh, this is another word I just love.  Gives me a rush just to read it, despite how close it is, ironically, to another word which means its near opposite (just take out the "u").  Is it affected of me to prefer to pronounce it the French way?  What can I say?  It just sounds so much more puissant that way.

Ah, well, hopefully I will be able to come back and post a poem using it today.  Or maybe you will.  Enjoy!

*****
Saturday, 9:15 a.m.

One shining thought
one puissant notion --

It can be anything.
It can come from anywhere.
It can make you
who you will become.