Daigon
on Grief: 6 Poems
Editor's
note: We've featured
Ruth's work many, many times
in the KotaPress Poetry
Journal and are always touched
to the core by her works.
This is the first time Ruth
offered works to us for
use in the Loss Journal,
and I don't think we could
find a more eloquent and
graceful expression for
the many facets of grief
that we all face in our
day to day lives. Many thanks,
Ruth, for your continued
support and contributions
to our Kota work!
THE
YOUNG DEAD
(in memoriam to all the young victims of war)
in the blue fires of midnight
we weep for the children
we will never meet
little naked ghosts
that will not know warmth
or filaments of memory
there is no loneliness
like theirs
nothing for them to do but
circle the long days
in the green countries of
the mind
still visible but forever
out of reach.
we sense the air blowing
through cracks in our lives
each night dreams tilt the
ancient light of stars
and shift positions toward
the young dead
never changing or aging
now perfect in their absence
we watch the young asleep
in a universe
just outside our arms
and if they dream a moment
they will see us there
smiling in an older language
waving them on with casual
hands and shuttered hearts
and when we step out of
our bodies
our spirits will stand guard
until the moon opens her
white lips
and welcomes us
THE
LONG NIGHT OF THE BODY
She dreads the thought
of going back
empty handed,
with memory shredded
into alphabets of silence.
Through the long night
of the body,
she weaves a tapestry,
finger tips remembering
each stitch,
each stroke a small pulling
together
of her entrance into the
world, poised
like a bird, shaped
into a moment of wings
in a perfect attention of
flight
of branching roads beneath
her,
corridors of wind, tattoos
of light,
a sliver of stream finding
its path
through rock and earth
and clay
through a universe of seeds
moting the calm summer air
and wonder leaping in recognition.
In a hush of color, she
returns
unencumbered
after traveling the forbidden
planet
and returning
weightless with wonder.
MOUTHING
SECRETS
Since I have learned not
to kill them
things have been easier
Though I prefer my ghosts
to inhabit the dark
if they come by day
I'll leave all the doors
open
I watch them mouthing secrets
smiling as if there were
two heavens
I recall simple equations
in the heart's circumference
each sum exquisitely fixed
in my memory
Women in sweet and sudden
rages
for fear the future comes
when they're not looking
Children claustrophobic
in their skins
fanning out like fish bones
Younglings piercing love's
delicate membrane
to taste the fleshy core
Friends in the gray solfeggio
of autumn
and the ritual smile
Together with them, the
seeded hours pass
until a spill of sun, a
sweep of shade
and under the ashen stars
my dead are growing old
BITTERSWEET
these are the falling years
for them
they will go deep and remember
how they flew the ecstatic
moments
and returned to an indifferent
earth
and what they never knew
they invented
caressed by a wind
stirring their deepest sleep
where the elders walked
the paths of earth
leading them step by step
stone by stone
until parachutes of light
announced the dawn
youth was once a gift they
could afford to lose
but now as the moments spin
retreats
every day is strung
and restrung like broken
beads
the storehouse of the past
guards
the silken clefts of the
body
the straight secret of the
spine
the winged scapulae
with their recurrent hints
of flight
and the blind hours before
dawn to midnight's blaze
the heart recalls
the suddenness of trees
and flawless entrance of
morning light
spring blooms and impermanent
buds
flowers so fragile and generous
willing to fade
giving way to the fruits
of summer
ripe and bursting to bloom
the juice flowing from within
abundant
and the rich life reaching
down to the roots again
TIME
ENOUGH
In a world lit by summer
during day's sweet drifting,
the rain runs green
and all the buried springs
glow in the soil of sleep
.
Even in this mild terrain
the air is burdened
with the taste of regret
the seduction of darkness
and a wilderness beginning
to unravel.
Nothing is unknown to us.
We have a weather all our
own
an inward circling sun
a river of stars that has
no source
and a long history of rain
No more our days
deliciously surrender to
the unknown,
for all is known.
No more the lying naked
and inventing
new names for nakedness.
No more the singing echoes.
The golden girls are gone.
The bears are dead.
The spells which kept our
children close,
forgotten, and the voice
that sent us
off into the world becomes
our own
as we tell the young
You'll come once upon a
time.
Only once
and before darkness rises
like hot breath
and the lotus moon's still
blooming
in our arms there may be
time enough
to choose an ending
that has not chosen us.
THE
DROWNING
1
We keep pulling him up
from the bottom of the Red
River
in stop-action or slow-motion
and replay the splash
blooming around his hips.
We correct his dive,
restore the promise
of his form, each movement
clear in the instant of
falling.
The moment reversed,
we reel him up
to where he's still
sitting on the bank.
Mother covers her
bare scalp with hair
torn by its roots.
Screams sucked back
into her mouth become
soft syllables again.
Her shredded clothes
re-woven. The table set
for his return.
2
Again he's swimming
and the Red River
opens wide to take him in.
Mother's rooted to the bank
her voice floating over
water
we're waiting supper for
you.
Bread and milk lie
heavy on the table where
sisters
stand strange to one another.
They turn their backs
and climb the stairs
to narrow rooms.
It's that time of year
nudging memories of
his face streaked with summer
murmurs at evening meals
walks along the river
with its glowing spine.
In this house where
no one survives love
darkness opens like a white
door.
3
Summer nights we'd sit
on the back veranda
planing down the hours with
small talk.
Stories flowed in a spill
of old pleasures
sweet and tart and light
on the tongue
The air was fresh the weather
excellent
the room radiant with the
dead.
About
the Author
Ruth Daigon was founder
and editor of POETS ON:
for twenty years until it
ceased publication. Her
poems have been widely published
in E mags, print mags, anthologies
and collections. She was
Poet-Of-The-Month on the
University of Chile's Pares
Cum Paribus (an E chapbook
in English and Spanish).
Her chapbooks appear in
WEBDELSOL, THE ALSOP REVIEW,
FORPOETRY, POETRYMAGAZINE,
THREE CANDLE REVIEW, KOTAPRESS
POETRY ANTHOLOGY both in
hard cover and on the WEB.
Some of her earlier poetry collections are "Between One Future And the Next (Papier-Mâché Press) 1995, "About A Year" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poetry Series)1996. Daigon's poetry awards include "The Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California Anthology), 1997) and the Greensboro Poetry Award (Greensboro Arts Council, 2000) Her poetry collections continue with "The Moon Inside" (Gravity/Newton's Baby), 1999. She is part of Pudding House Publications Poetry Chapbook Series "Ruth Daigon's Greatest Hits 1970-2000. "Payday At The Triangle" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) based on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City,1911 was published in 2001 and one of her many readings was performed in The Lower East Side tenement Museum in Manhattan, the area where the fire occurred. Her latest poetry book is "Handfuls of Time" (Small Poetry Press, Select Poets Series) 2002. Her poetry was published by the State department in their literary exchange with Thailand and their translation program has just issued the first book of Modern American poets in English and Thai in which she appears. Her poetry also appeared on the Garrison Keilor show.
You can reach Ruth at ruthart@aol.com
