Lynn Strongin


OTHERWORLDY, Iowa: wave-upon-wave of wheat.
Patients rising halfway in their beds; 
A dusty cradle a broken window; life was once here.
 
Like the birth bracelet cut off, then lost: a reminder: Wave upon wave of whiteness.
I yearn for a forever-home in which to grow old
How the heart beats. Working its way on: I take a deep breath before reading your poem.
Your poems, kind as they are, are always knock-down drag-outs
On the bed is laid my wedding-guest dress
An aftershock comes:
           
            Otherworldly as it feels to watch wave-upon-wave of wheat, ward beds bend.



HOTBOY peacock is about town.
But lets our village down.
Color the storybook straw & brickish blonde. I keep my journey private to arrive ahead of my rivals.
 
Enchanted to forget the hell I have been through
A grid of beds
Falling, a waterfall of iron..
 
If we fall out of touch.
How to keep notching victories
The worst blow in the world…
            When the assaulted country opened its doors, its windows unslatted zeroes:
            The lily came forward like teenage boys: exiled albinos.



HUNTING SONG
I’m only a journey boy doing the best I can.
Take the chrysalis, buried in a jar of sand, opens to wings.
 
Night frosts. The prey is caught,
During the dark days of winter peat
Covered with ash we tie day with a sash.
 
Get the clinkers out of the stoke hole
A sparkling crystal
I do not look for unexpected reprieve, only love.
 
            You sung the hunting song 
            Till dawn sinks down to rust.



LEST WE FORGET
            You hand me a lily
White as lymphoma, a cup of tea.
 
Black & white as a zebra
The lark ascends. His song like Hildegarde Von Bingen never ends.
In an English scrap book
 
Paper has become fragile
Border is all that remains.
You & I are boarders.
            In  borrowed terrain
            We will cash in for kinder penitence when the time comes.



THE EXQUISTIE lesson of breathing
A hot house-heat, dampness in the nursery
Like that of old age
 
The discarded cradle
Holding knit sweaters, shawls, pot holders, blankets
All things wool to warm
 
What one longs for are crustaceans: the gorgeous pink-orange of lobster
Brittle as old Bible
Parchment, the claws pearls to the touch, rosary beads;
            Few needs left:
            A jar holding paintbrushes. Ribs hurt remembering the exquisite lesson of breathing
                        songbirds the slight, bright nourishment wreathing.


HOW SHALL I LET you go?
Finger-by-finger? hand-by-hand?
Helping me out of the tub
In the faraway & long ago. Before I slept in a cradle / stable in age? Home Care Workers. Respecting.
Page-by-page cigarette-scarred, our earliest letters from Postes Canada
When I drove to the red mailbox slipped the letter into the slot
Fingers I blew on with the desert cold.
 
Postcards, bent like letters:
We met. . . as we might say adieu:
at some railway platform, slat-by-slat, sun fading: You’d be in a dreamy English land, blue-jeaned:. I’d be. . .
Wearing a Romanian shawl, rising from the ashes of a hundred Sobranies.



AGE ABOVE A LIBRARY in a hundred-year-old home
Another spindly sunset, twigs upon horizon, a twist of light:
Reminiscent of cathedral-back chair
Sculpted Quaker. Longing, a writhe of flame
 
Reminiscent of dusty empty cradle. War-broken windowpane. We set out in search of paradise.
Set home. Days on a shoestring:
A yarn of losses that would wind earth around.
 
Barters grief
For one drop in the well: :
A tiny window when you move a tulip, a chair
            Sunlight shafts: I see another sunrise before & after all
            Two literary souls above a library choked with books, onions in the oven, 
            Lesbians aging, good gardeners above the hall, smile in moth-eaten sweaters; cook well.
            
            

Lynn Strongin's full-length book of poems Kiosk was recently published by Erbace Press, Liverpool, U.K. The Charter for Compassion invited me to give a podcast and to be interviewed. Danielle Ofri, the eminent American writer and doctor will interview. I speak about the development of my work and life, most importantly about the physical and spiritual struggles of late life polio.

 
 

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