the tender hour
toad ink on paper 1976 Tia Ballantine
This grouping of published poems signals a new beginning of an as yet disorganized manuscript that is still mysterious to me. I am waiting -- listening and drawing as I wait, copying down what comes, dancing to the odd bells and whistles of the night.
I have entitled this group of poems the tender hour because they belong to those quiet moments close to the edge of day night and nerves.
eyes Ezra Eismont
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Published: War, Literature, and the Arts 2009
EVER SOUNDS LIKE BIRTH
Angels in drag dance a too fast tango
that can’t be danced by anyone with bones.
They spin high blue lifting dust from dry ground
etch the sky floating wingless floating down.
They’re drifting bouts of pretty, sea fevers
specked with gold, bass guitars, wildflower seed,
bare feet. Rain mixed with frozen earth. Small hands
locked in minor key. This music demands
great flexibility but when dawn arrives
to stop the dance, light binds heat to stone, white
blue to fierce pink. Earth removes her skin
folds it into sky, hearts tucked well inside.
Then color sounds as a tap tap tapping
of song birds pecking at the heads of pins.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Published: Saw Palm, 2006:
A COMPREHENSIVE MAP OF PARADISE
An alabaster angel with one hand flat against its cheek
sits near a 19th century black carved coconut, balanced
on a woven basket from Vietnam. Rain comes through
the window and beads on the angel’s head. Across
the room, a woman carved of ebony carries one hip
forward and an empty water jar on her head. Her breasts
are rubbed from black to tan, her back bared to four
wingspread birds on a gold-stained lacquer screen. One
a swallow, another a mocking bird, and two wet
with silence. Like fingers, the fringe of the Mexican
shawl drawn tight across the piano bench blows
out on wind. Someone digs a hole beneath
the banyan tree with a shovel
that sounds like teeth.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Pub. Mixed Nerve 1.3 (June 2007).
FLOODGATES
After driving around for an hour
(or more) circling parked cars, I see a neighbor
putting suitcases in her Cadillac.
She’s off to catch the midnight plane. What luck.
(The spaciousness of such a departure.)
Glad to stop driving at last, I gesture
my thanks to her. The rain’s coming down hard
and I’ve a ways to walk but the car’s parked.
As rain pulls the scent of blooming jasmine
from night air and settles it on my skin,
I wonder if the moon’s broken through dreams
that line your night. I’m tired, ready for sleep
for the forgiving radiance of dream,
but can’t. I have overstayed my time. Vivam
Ovid writes to close his verse I will live
I will last.
So might we, cloaking ourselves
in colors drawn from stone the emptied wells
of memory of bone. The brightest silks,
I think, are those that stay when skin leaves skin
and eyes close against misremembered scent.
The rain's more now than when this walk began
and I’m washed out by flood. Dark comes on slant,
flat as panes of glass and I wish I had
above me yards of yellow silk to act
as a dam might, holding this rain on high
as a hidden reservoir crystalline
and blue: a perfect lens that opens sky
to a wash of stars I rarely ever see.
* * * * * * * * * *
ARCHEOLOGY
Alone people possess an emptiness
that's unapproachable, a dry color
that sounds as ocean sounds, as shallow roar,
flattened out to pounded tin: defenseless,
marked with stars and hollow moons, relentless
coming again and again past the one
thing that spills but can't stay: mountains that flow
to plains, leaving thin stains on flesh like breath
and just as loud. Alone people cannot
inherit strange names alive with glory
or moss-green eyes. On their backs, they carry
practical things like tissue paper hearts
and hooks for climbing sea cliffs. They use teeth
to peel stone, then read the signs locked beneath.
