A
poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And
better than that: it invites a total response.
- Muriel Rukeyser (1949)
Sample poems
Rapture
Devoted to studying
the night sky, I peer
through a telescope, find
the comet's tail.
I try to see eternity, each star
a point of entry. I am translator
of space and time.
Do you hear?
First published in
Lynx Eye
Frogs
Hundreds of them
the source of sound, risen
from the bottom of the pond.
We breathe quietly so as
not to disturb them.
You lean against a large
moss-covered rock.
I want to take you right there
against that rock
and again around the bend,
in a sun-filled clearing,
against a tree, on the
leaf laden, God laden
path, on papery birch bark,
in the mud puddle, on that
patch of melting snow.
Take or be taken.
I want to bare myself
for your pleasure. Listen,
the water comes to life! The
frogs
are yearning, legs spread behind them,
their eyes just above the water.
Copyright 2004,
First published in Lifeboat
Poem for Jack Spicer, Deadbeat Poet
You never found the perfect partner,
that mute, nubile eunuch
with mirrors for eyes.
So you neglected your bitter body,
perspired beer and cheap brandy,
your fingers marred by Kool stains
and truths
and lies
and half-truths.
You held court in Aquatic Park,
your calloused radio tuned to
the ball game. Your cup filled up,
with venom
and hurt
and fruitless pursuits,
incessant, inexplicable couplings--
men, women, boys--and then
your cocksure rivalries
with the likes of Ginsburg, Persky,
Duncan, Ferlinghetti. I could go on.
Shall I go on?
Copyright 2003, First published in Full Circle Journal
The Highest Places
Downy,
the hip-high heads of dandelions
nod at the field of lady’s thumbs
that lead to a barn on the bluff.
Above and below, the blue
of Newfoundland
water, sky, lupine,
forget-me-nots,
my son’s eyes.
Scaffolding is in place
for this foreshortened season.
The island’s seabound mountains
feed on rolling capelin,
black and thick as oil slicks.
Tourists flock to villages
that list on the brink of grief
worn inside out, bound to pride,
a codless ocean, ghosts of the past
and missing. And still,
crows measure the perimeter of bays,
spread seed across fields and cliffs.
They nest in the highest places where
God’s breath condenses into fog.
Copyright 2005, in "Rough Places Plain - Poems of the Mountains"
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copyright @2010 by Emily Ferrara
