congeries

Today's word is

congeries

This is not in fact plural in spite of the terminal "s."  However, its definition implies plurality.  Interesting.

This is one of those words I haven't thought about since the SAT, and it's too bad, 'cause I kind of like it.

*****
Thursday, 7:01 p.m.

Two poems today!  Two!  First, something about my character:

A pair of fire trucks
fills my tiny street.
I back away instinctively
from my window
so I cannot see.

If I don't see it happen,
it won't touch me.
It won't reach me.
Besides, it's no concern of mine,
and I have bad poems to write.

This action fights
another instinct,
the instinct to
fling open a window
and stretch my head out
to see more,
to see everything,
to know.

A congeries of
neighbors clumps
in the parking lot
of the building next door
with one expression,
a little embarrassed,
a little bemused.

No one seems sad or afraid,
as far as I have seen
while deciding whether to look.

I give in to the pull away,
and when I look again,
the firetrucks,
the neighbors,
the embarrassment, bemusement, and noise
are all gone.

It's like nothing ever happened
and the only thing that's touched me
from that nothing
is doubt.

Now, for my little friend M., something about someone else's character:

from your lioness mother,
sick child,
comes a letter
bearing a congeries
of dark thoughts
like black wings fluttering,
snapshots of the sun in your smile
and gleaming off your pale scalp,
all that betrayal by a silent god,
and her knowledge that you,
flesh of her flesh,
smiler of her very smile,
can and will anyway

she is a lioness, little one

in the cold, noisy metal places
you must go without her now,
feel her softness around you

feel her growling into your danger,
yelping at your pain

feel her blood in your blood,
her bone in your bone

know the lioness growing up in you, cub,
and roar

Comments

[Cathy]

Well . . . simply: Wow.