ARCHIVES SALLY COOK EPO Poems Prior to 2023

AN INTERLUDE

He was the stream and she the underbrush;
The rain that fell upon his upturned face.
She was the shadowed glade in evening’s hush
That memorized the sun, received its grace.
She was the sea, and he the wavering shore;
Sometimes she was a fragile bit of lace,
He was the harvest moon above her door,
Creating out of shadows an embrace.

But then, as shadows of their closeness clashed—
For beauteous as they were they could not stand—
Once all poetic similes had smashed
He shouted; she withdrew, crawled up the sand.
The moon went dark, winds rose, high waves were lashed
Against their crystal edifice, which crashed.
 

FAMILIAL BONFIRES

Once they were closer than I knew;
By now they should have changed.
Time’s pumice scratch, and passion’s screw
Took flesh and re-arranged

Her whitened hair, still thick and lush,
His cataracted eyes
So much like mine, where tears still rush,
His anger that would rise

Across the dark, impede my heart.
I knew they still must bicker
About the house, and live apart,
Lest swift resentment flicker.

In drafty rooms where I once was
Forever child and errant,
I hear again the bitter buzz
Between each quarrelling parent.

They’re calmer now, outside the pane
They wander closer to me.
Through wavy glass, her great gold mane--
He’s what he used to be

Who owned three sets of formal clothes,
Would never wear white gold.
Bad taste! he said, and Heaven knows
How often we were told.

We’d laugh at jokes about the leg
Of some Victorian chick,
So risqué then, Should a cat beg,
He swore he’d take a stick

In hand, and beat the living tar
Out of it for a bit;
Called us all Communists; cigar
Clamped tight, he’d chew on it.

Outside, she’d sprinkle kerosene
On past defeats and stumps.
Her dreams well drenched, the Bonfire Queen
Would spark the flame that jumps.

One somber hue, a fitting gleam,
A quarrelling little tune
Of talk from those who’d lost their dream
Beneath a changeless moon.

Beauty is ours to contemplate,
Though not much of it shows.
A scrap of blue in sky or plate,
The scrub wood as it glows.

Time sometimes takes a backward turn
And frees us from our twist
Of pain, to give us more to learn
From our apportioned list.

UNLIKELY OCCASIONS

I asked the doctor, Will I play again?
I’d slipped on ice, my shattered arm was sore.
I could have done without the pain, but then
He laughed and said You never could before!

My mother sent a cookie recipe—
I lost it. Desperation raised my eyes
To heaven, and it floated easily
Down from the ceiling. Faith holds no surprise.

A strange occurrence always causes doubt.
A tour bus stopped at Midget Market, and
A dozen little people tumbled out—
Some things are too outré to understand.

I think then of old Carlo, unkempt sot
Whose contemplative glare shrieked Don’t disturb!
As body fluids froze him to the spot
Cemented. Three cops pried him off the curb.

The downtown traffic circle gives a jar
To memory. One boisterous drunken night
I rode upon the hood of some guy’s car—
Hood ornament, I almost rose, took flight.

If you count down from Newton to this day,
The history of gravity is brief.
But some things you cannot just brush away
Without a short suspension of belief.

THE CAT WHO BARKED

There is a row of trees that crowd the ground,
They’re dark and still. My cat lies in that spot.
His tiger stripes were equal all around
But now lie wrapped in shrouds and laid to rot.

Or—perhaps not. Though he once mewed and purred,
Took longish naps, and loved a bit of cream,
He also barked. It was a thing he heard
Out on the street; we thought it was a scream.

Today, through tears, we watched as he unwound
His winding sheet, and took a breath of air,
And scampered off, tail up, until he found
A velvet divan put for trashmen there.

Then when he saw that everything was good,
He upped and strolled into that darkened wood.

____________

THE POWER

I’ve noticed more and more of late
My power to infuriate
Is stronger than it’s ever been.
I exercise it even when
I try to be both dull and sweet
And humble, willing, incomplete.

Infuriation fills the air;
I feel it in each icy stare,
The phone that doesn’t ring, the blare
Of constant mediocrity—
The lack of love, the misery.
 

COLOR SONGS

Should an arpeggio take flight
It shows you green in minor tones—
A small flute made of malachite,
One sprightly saint’s transmuted bones.

How rich the sound that orange makes!
So clear, and unequivocal.
The simple path to Heaven’s gates
Lies in each marigold’s bright ball.

As ochre slants the autumn sun,
Momentum carries you along:
The ancient path that orb’s begun,
The echo of a brassy gong.

 

MAKING ALL THINGS ORDERLY

Stare at grey clapboards in unbroken rows
That seem to follow the unceasing sound
Of thrumming traffic, with no vibrant red
Or swaying leaves to soften sunlight’s blows.

Poems of air and chlorophyll’s repose
Have gone; the smallest traces can’t be found—
Destroyed, as some fool’s sense of order fed
On massacre of hollyhock and rose.

For you and I know there are always those
Who come to slash and dig and curse the ground
Where fantasy has bloomed, and plant instead
Their awful dragon’s teeth. And I suppose

What grows from them is vigilant, and toes
Its dull unthinking line, but pound for pound
Cannot compare to one small flower bed
Of buds, rough stalks, and silken furbelows.

 

GENTRIFICATION

The flagstone walk remains strong and embedded,
Though all the dandelions have been beheaded;
But you can still get eggplant that’s been breaded
Around the corner at a little bar.

It’s not the ambience that rearranged
Itself, or residents became estranged,
But rather that the people were exchanged
For graduates of Lit Class or the Bar.

For those requiring blandness and safe spaces
Disdained the lumpy lower-middle faces
Who used to live in their prime rental spaces
And so offended self-important weenies
And gravel-voiced chicks stuffed in small bikinis.
They banished them to some far distant star.

INVISIBILITY

She used to think her sole and starring role
Was set within a sparkling social life
Gadding about from one new watering hole
To others, and so many of them rife
With famous folk, who’d often sink a knife
Into the next’s one’s bright ballooning talk.

She lived an arty and ambitious life
Exceeding pace, and walked the fastest walk,
Until her natal stars began to balk,
And planetary aspects swayed and bent.

Then, though she’d preen herself each time and stalk
All those on greater, higher planes who went
Floating on gilded feet upon the air,
Arrows rushed past her—she was unseen there.

   ___________________

EARLY DAYS

The scent of roses, and the blazing sun,
The gas pump next door busy—day’s begun.
No school; some insects flit. I feel the heat
Upon my skinny shoulders and my feet.

As Mama’s chickens cackle in their pen,
I revel in the world I’m in. But then
Not too far off, there lay a darkened wood
To which I soon would go, because I could:
A place of cheats and liars, claw and tooth;
And no defense to bolster up the truth.

I reveled in that wood when as a child,
Though things I could not know were running wild.
In spite of disappointments of this world,
My early life survives, chaste and dew-pearled.
 

GOING TO GOWANDA

Just one more time before I’m dead,
I’d like some comfort food, she said.
Though Mother feared Gowanda’s hills
And thoughts of them increased her ills
We took off, motored to the top
To save gas—coasted to a stop,
Then gravity would catch the flow
Of whirligigs, bright clouds below
To get to whistle pigs, her dream—
Bacon-wrapped sausage, mint ice cream
Was never to be tossed aside
Because of a bump-filled, nutty ride
With that woman we never knew, a bride
On a whirlwind fall day, side by side.

                         ___________________

ENDANGERED

My heart’s a little tough these days
From being kicked down streets, byways
Like some discarded piece of steak.
All dried up, crisscrossed with a rake,
It rolls along, distressed, alone,
Without a trace of muscle tone
To make it race, or skip a beat—
Upon the sidelines takes a seat
To watch the heartless ones play games
Of wins and losses, and who blames
The other one for what and why.
No heartfelt tears to mourn the lie,
It hopes that someday soon you’ll come
To rescue this endangered one.

THE MAN WHO LOVED TREES

Looking for greatness everywhere, I did
Think trees remote, irrelevant in time.
My outlook stiffened as deep problems hid
Their faces; and each day stopped on a dime.
Severe intentions froze my narrow view.
I was a fool—and each tree thought so, too.

And so I laughed when you spoke well of trees;
Sneering at your daft simplicity
As you praised spread and species, and the ease
With which they stood. Then, in complicity,
The trees conspired to catch the passing breeze
That ruffled your scant hair illicitly,
Pulling your tie askew as if to tease.
Lifting your Panama, it laughed at me.
 

HER GRACE

The day arrived when Edna was too blind
To live alone. She gave her things away—
The china owl with one glass eye—her mind
Was on the bumps in sidewalk cracks that day.
A flowered pitcher, empty, save for tears—
She knew what faced her in that place where old
Folks had to go, so, facing her worst fears,
Packed canisters devoid of flour, cold
Old roasting pans, some ribbon, recipes,
Affections, memories, her younger face;
Mementoes of her eccentricities,
And all that passing time could not erase.
The absence of all laughter in the gloom
When all would end in one small, scoured room.

                            ___________________

POETRY

A poem, subscribing to a plan,
Flies higher than the highest planes,
Seems safer than a rose-red tan,
Or traffic in the fastest lanes,
Where people die in random crashes.
And yet how dangerous are words?
Combined, their meaning soon surpasses
A single, random act. Like birds,
We let words fly. The way they fit
Reveals much more than we admit.

AFTER A FREEZE

After a freeze, the ground is hard and sere.
Hard ice piles up upon the crusted snow.
Dry plants shrink back. They seem to show their fear,
As I do when I think back on the flow
Of time and shrink a little in my shell,
And know I’ve learned my lesson very well—
That every crack in armor writes a line,
And in the end you use it as a rhyme.

  ___________________

ILLUSIONS

There is an awful leaden weight
Upon my heart. Inevitably
I cannot see, approve, relate
To what destroys my fantasy.
I see some whole, enjoying me
With open heart; but yet to date,
I do not meet one who feels free
Enough to love. At any rate,
I am that object on the shelf
Priced out of reach—star on the tree
Or in the sky. I find myself
Caught in a trap; see I must be
A pale illusive fantasy,
Who cannot please or pay the fee.
 

THE GARDEN IN THE BACK

There used to be a garden in the back—
Fine vegetables, some zinnias, a pack
Of Four O’Clocks around a step of wood—
It seemed as if thick clustered roses could
Climb higher than green even rows of corn
Above the highest peaks, just to adorn
The house, two chimneys and the slated roof.
My house. So if some others were aloof,
Disparaging my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams,
I had four walls, two floors, two silver streams,
A meadow and a pine tree and a hill.
A few bright thoughts, like zinnias; my will.

  ___________________

  ___________________

THE LOST GYPSIES

Just where the air hung sharp as wine
Under the moon and star-lit shine,
Gypsies were singing, waked our cow.
Where are the sons of Egypt now?

Under a cloudless dome so stark,
Roaming the back streets in the dark;
Living in storefronts, trivialized,
Dull and diminished—civilized?

I like to think I still could lean
Out of the casement, dreaming, keen,
Longing to crawl through long, sweet hay,
Quick, jump the stream—then off, away.

Campfires are burning somewhere still
Midnights, near any rock and rill—
Shadows still journey to our old creek—
Ghosts, calling back that lost mystique

Beside bright painted wagons, where
Secrets are waiting for me there.
Dressed in my spangled skirt, I’ll learn
How to read fortunes as bonfires burn.
 

VAN GOGH AND I

Von Gogh had a bedroom (so did I)
With a slanted roof that leaned one way.
My roof had no slant; his bed was wood.
Mine was iron, brass; the spindles could
Draw thin curves there, upon the whitened wall;
All in a brilliant crimson; narrow, tall…
Van Gogh was forced to leave his yellow house.
We all are Gypsies, moving is our lot,
Forever trying for the very best,
And in between, just hoping for some rest.
 

THE BEACH AT EVENING

Some summer people, simple, shining
Tarnished with the grit of day,
On the dampening sand, entwining,
After all their talk and play.
Happy faces, some revising,
White marks where straps slipped away;
Hamstrung muscles, sore and straining,
Got from running every way.

Shadows, working into darkness,
Rich skies start to fade away—
They can see the sunset glowing,
Red and gold that fades to grey.

  ___________________

MONEY

I never thought that you could be
The slippery man of mystery
You liked to intimate that you
Were then. And so confusion grew,
And when you couldn’t pull it off
You gave a little awkward cough,
Retreated to your store of money
Which suited you to spread like honey.

Leaving faint trails of it about,
You couldn’t lose! That manic shout
I hear, whenever fools get stuck,
Was yours—you could afford a truck
To pull you out in any weather—
Regard for you flew like a feather.

WORDSWORTH WAS RIGHT

Lost in leaves, rain in the eaves
Can run away with memory.
Lucky the one who still believes
That life is full of symmetry.

Though pigeons claim authority,
Attempt to tell us otherwise,
A vast and dull sorority
Proclaims our freedom from surprise.

They fear the brunt of life, but when
Air cools, and floods of fluid rain
Drop on the places we have been,
The best of us begin again.

LANDSCAPE

Water, transparent, green as jade.
Sand, in a softened ochre mass.
Grey lumpy rocks, in lined parade,
Framed by pooled water, smooth as glass.

Plunging in waves, the skies invade—
Circuits of pastel; flaming brass.
Opaline rainbows fade to shade
Upon the clear green of the grass.

Never the same, the soft tones trade,
Out of this mix landscape is made.

  ___________________

WHAT HAVE WE COME TO

Now we will try to save the earth
By eating insects. What’s it worth
To serve ourselves such awful chow?
We’re cautioned that a gaseous cow
Can take away the oxygen,
To give up oil, and coal, and then
Hope that the sun will shine each day.
Just hope; for Heaven’s sake, don’t pray,
But watch the many windmills play
As ducks, unlucky, drop in thickets.
No matter, soon we’ll snack on crickets
Roasted, dipped in chocolate sauce.
They’re bugs, we’re human—and we’re boss!

THE STAR AND THE CRESCENT MOON*

One recent twilit evening a young Star
Ran into a slim crescent Moon, and sat
Down with him on the terrace of a bar.
They ordered drinks, and settled in to chat.

The Star said I’ll have fireflies in a jar,
The Moon requested double sunlight, neat.
He much preferred flirtation from afar,
But drama makes a starlet’s life complete.

They flirted; then Moon said he’d hoped they’d meet,
And where do Stars come from? Star simpered, sipped,
Then belched some red hot sparks—the intense heat
Made her loquacious; she asked Are you ripped?

On her third jar of fireflies, she tripped.
I think I saw you here last month, said Moon.
My orbit every now and then gets tipped;
You were that hot one, weren’t you, in Cancun?

You’d like a constellation, you buffoon!
Said Star, You’re young, too changeable, I’ve heard.
And, seeing your dark side this afternoon—
I have to twinkle; that’s my final word.

Star rose, and faded in a cloud of blue
As Moon sniffed; muttered It’s not me, it’s you.
 
                   *(First published in Trinacria)

AND WHAT OF ART?*

It used to be that there was a division
Between the arts, and each had segments, too.
A poem was just a poem after revision;
A painter mixed his colors—blue was blue,

And didn’t need some trash, or added gravel
To make it more exciting to the eye.
Once, dance depicted grace, and human travel
Through life was not a calisthenic lie.

And when did sculpture morph into some girders,
Well rusted, piled together in a heap?
A thousand of these small aesthetic murders,
And art began to take a frantic leap
Into the current chaos that we think of
As progress; and the little love we keep
For beauty is sunk deep below the stink of
The odor of a rotting garbage heap.

               *(First published in Chronicles)

    ____________________________

ON A PARK STREET DAY

Two kitchen windows. They look out
Upon a narrow strip of lawn,
And bittersweet. Just after dawn
The air is sweet. The morning gone,
The day’s in flower, sun is out.
Dishes are washed, and drawings done,
And all the bustle and the brawn
Of commerce now has been withdrawn
As afternoon lies, soaking sun.
Lazy, languorous, open to
A blaze of red, the deepening blue --
A window with a larger view.

A LESSON

I watched her fingers flashing in the sun
Over the paper, hovering just where
A letter to an old friend was begun,
Describing work she had before her, where

Some baby chicks behind the coal stove warmed,
And butter made from cream, just pasteurized,
Was setting in thick yellow skins. When formed,
I churned it up till butter turned; surprised

To see her pen still moving. Then, her ring --
One tiny brilliant diamond in green gold --
Reflecting on that pen. A magic thing,
These beams merged to create a compound mold

Of jewel and pen, intriguing me; a call,
Before I could articulate or scrawl.

THE GENTLE DENTIST

Pachelbel plays, as my good dentist drills
Decay away and fixes dental ills
That aggravate, but cannot heal the sum
Or even part of my pierced heart, struck dumb.

His soothing room holds light like pear liquor;
Pale amber, making everything a blur.
Each light ray shines; the art-filled walls grow dull
And dim the confines of each cubicle,
To grey the waiting room, fine books, the couch,
Meld them in squares, where coffee tables crouch.

I wish that withered hearts were quickly patched
As teeth can be—as hardwood, badly scratched,
Can soak up soothing oils to heal each burn;
When pain waits for us, everywhere we turn.

 

LANDSCAPE

Water, transparent, green as jade,
Sand, which may someday turn to glass.
Grey lumpy rocks, in lined parade
Framed by some darkened damp sweet grass.

Plunging in waves, the skies invade—
Circuits of pastel; flaming brass.
Opaline rainbows fade to shade
Upon the water, green as glass.

An Idyll

I muse a lot on what has gone:
Sweet scents, croquet upon the lawn,
Poems read, just at bedtime,
Words forming pictures, gliding rhyme.

A rabbit’s shadow on the wall
Formed by small hands—a pine, so tall
It scratches sound upon the porch—
Moon moths, a citronella torch;
A stretch of time, a quarter chime,
The hope my musings might combine
With hope for that bright future time
When all these things may fuse, align.

Changes

Pianos left her many years ago—
She hasn’t sung in concert for a while,
Or cared to dress with any sense of style.
Her eyes are bad; she doesn’t read a lot.

This year, the snow took much too long to go,
And her heart pondered those in double files
Who, armed with wily smiles, like crocodiles,
Lashed out their words as if they were buckshot.

Of all the many things she tried to know,
A few stood out along life’s bumpy mile.
Like Caesar, as he traversed the great Nile
With Cleo, in a convoluted plot,
It was too much. She turned her eyes to truth
In beauty, which had solaced her from youth.

What a Wit is Worth

  For John Whitworth*, poet

Oh,  Whitman was a rhymer who enjoyed to play the part
Of complicating everything. It’s something of an art
To ramble on for pages on the pinprick of a thought,
Which makes word choice irrelevant, and form seem overwrought,
And chokes the flow of meter like a clot within the heart,
And leaves the scansion bumpy as an overladen cart.
Oh, you may paint your wheelbarrows as red as Commie traitors,
Make sure your plums keep cool and bland in sleek refrigerators,
And hope to Heaven you will cause great earthquakes and unease
Disturbing all the critics huddling roosted in the trees,
But Whitworth’s worth more half again than all the free verse clamor
That issued from that country boy whose hyperbolic stammer
Has branded modern poetry these hundred years or so.
So, now along the bottom road, as in arrears we go,
Feel sorry for poor poets blaring pompously, full blast—
And wave the flag for wit and humor—these things truly last.

*English poet John Whitworth passed away in April of 2019.  Among his other accomplishments his last book was Joy in the Morning (Kelsay, 2016). He also wrote a book about writing poetry—Writing Poetry (A&C Black, 2001)—and was the editor of the anthology Making Love to Marilyn Monroe: The Faber Book of Blue Verse (Faber, 2006). Quoted on thehypertexts.com:  "I write in rhyme and metre because ... because that is what I do. That is the way poetry presents itself to me. I can't write it any other way. I'm not at all sure I would want to, but even if I did want to I couldn't."

  To Bury A Poet

   Some poets write, then publish what is written—
  Victorian ladies comment, are half smitten,
  Close followed by those ones who count mistakes—
  And in the end, well… all it ever takes
  Is some old crank know-nothing with a grudge
  To space out paragraphs of narrow sludge;
  Bean-counting lists; more negative the better;
  Word after word, to make one bitter letter.

  Ad hominem, these words are measured by
  The blot upon the page, and all in sight
  Join in the ruckus looking for a fight.
  This fan club—harsh and brash—is on the rise,
  To praise each other’s efforts to the skies.
  The poet? Buried in subservient lies.

  Sea Change

  He’s on his speaker; she’s talking on her phone.
  He hears her clearly; she feels left alone
  Beneath the surface of the deepest waves,
  And strains to find the clarity she craves.

   His sentences lack something at the end,
  Then tidal pull returns them, lest the bend
  Of that deep undertow of thought and sense
  Might rise up and demand some recompense.

  Those other people climbing in his car
  Push him across the waves to take him far
  Beyond the depths where she might care to go—
  She isn’t sure how far, and must go slow.

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