Constance Stadler
Connotative Parlay
I. abandonné
The clouds are far too soft.
The sea is far too blue.
The poppy infects with red
The child’s innocence
assaults anew.
Back to my threaded corner now
Of silken needlepoint travail
Your absence is a symphony
That overwhelms each stitch …
… syncopates each wail.
Dust and ashes strew my soil
Incense of Niobe’s fate
My sister of cavernous life
I remain in catacombs of wait
…and laugh, no one will ever come
for this withered heartless shell.
You left your ghost to torture it
‘neath its carapace I dwell.
II. Sheer Abandonment
The thinnest of tin whistles, an earthen bodran,
the harp of Dagda that makes angels weep,
carries me through prismatic landscapes
rolling on high and so low
in torrents of heather and green.
Oh, fill my arms with bedstraw heath and Allison sweet,
Let us dance as Connemaras caper and neigh,
Not a thought, not a plan
I Am Feeling
Aye, come Breeze kiss me
Lamb
On this beatific day of all days!
Constance Stadler © 2009
Dendrochronology
For all of my life,
Eight whole years
You were.
If I were triplicated
I could never have
Wrapped my arms
Around you
Or reached even your lowest
Branch.
But I ate tomato sandwiches
In the cavern at
Your trunk
Just big enough for me.
And you saved me from a slush ball massacre
As I hugged you and hid in that
Hollow you had made
Just for me.
Five years later
I came back to you
You were famous,
Miss Chumlin said.
But all that was left
Was this huge stump
With a deeply lined face
Like the old man
who smokes Camels
and does nothing else.
How important you were!
Born at the time of the Plague
And all the wet years and dry years
And fiery scaring years
Were there to behold!
So now we know weather past,
Have tracings of attempted kills.
And
I know not why we needed
To know such things.
I only know
You are gone.
Constance Stadler © 2009