Clotho at Work

In this instance, my sister-in-law’s long-departed grandmother. Photo taken in the early 70s outside the back entrance to our old house. Judging from the three or four layers of clothes she’s wearing and the fact that she’s huddled in the southwest corner taking in all the sunshine she can get, it must have been a sunny winter's day. Apart from that, this picture also reminds me of how large her hands were and how effortlessly they worked at unraveling the ball of yarn and twisting it onto the spindle until she came upon a knot and had to stop to untangle it. Utterly engrossed in what she was doing, she never realized I was three feet in front of her, never once looked up, never heard the shutter click, never even saw the picture afterwards before her fate called her away.

Abstract: Poem Penciled in Charcoal

Snowbound dark
Grey twig

Clearing its way through
Tract of white

Birches ringing
A glade.

Samizdat Revisted

Where one poet confesses 

To writing reams 

 

Of clandestine literature, speechless 

Others have nightmares 

 

They hand out pieces of his tongue 

And dream, dream, dream. 

 

 

Hassle number 8

Recently received from the author: Hassle number 8, featuring David Miller, Hassle Press: 27 Treverbyn Rd, St. Ives, Cornwall TR26 1EZ UK, hasslepress@yahoo.com

Poet, editor, art/lit critic, and accomplished clarinetist, see The Mind Shop, this is Series 5, #5 of Miller’s Spiritual Letters. A short biography, plus information about David’s many publications and some succinct appraisals of his highly demanding but always satisfying work can be found here. My thanks to David for sending me this “Spiritual Letter” under the guise of a plain black-and-white pamphlet. Much appreciated!

Tangerine

“The commune of Poetry becomes so real that [the poet]
sounds each particle in relation to parts of a great story
he knows will never be completed.”
--Robert Duncan, Bending the Bow

The Sung, tangible as
The word sounds.

In this instance, poet,
A small round

Reddish-orange object plucked
From a mandarin’s bough.

Immaterial

Nothing substantial, a revenant
Forever taking us back to where

We thought we were relevant.

Southern Exposure

In a stretch of winter sunshine,

Against a harsh weather-
Worn veranda wall,

Soft blue slippers up-
Right in the afternoon,

Next to a beckoning
Red-pillowed chair.