Idyllwild Dreaming III
Original image from the Carbon Canyon Chronicle blog.
“Idyllwild Dreaming” is a series of poems on dreaming and the imagination. Featured this month: “after the Sylmar Fire,” “city bells,” “Poem for Dan” and “7:30 am,” inspired by Michael Ryan and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Michael Ryan’s simple language creating a moment of transitional space sets the scene for “after the Sylmar fire,” written in the wake of the November fire that devastated Carbon Canyon before it was stopped at the 57 freeway. The second poem, “city bells” is directly inspired by Rilke’s First Elegy, quoting the first two lines of the poem: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich aus der Engel Ordnungen? These lines can be translated as: “And if I cried, who would hear me in the Angelic orders?” While these lines only appear in “city bells,” the loneliness of this cry informs the entire set of poems. As always: I am indebted to my editor, Matt Kessen, for his constructive advice and encouragement.
after the Sylmar Fire
The car passes motley storm swans
in the mortuary pond,
preening.
The white braces on the foothills
aren’t thunderheads.
Wet plumes rise.
Stricken, you pull to the shoulder:
the air is thick and
we have masks for smoke—
The flashpoints are pox-scars
on the black hills,
the ground—a painter’s dropcloth—
where noxious fingers stoop
to stir the dirt, ash rising
like mad fleas—
the white skirt concealing
our lacework city,
the blushing paved veins,
the supple arc of the highway—
our bulwark,
broken-legged.
There is no dew-song this morning;
it is the season of flying south,
of tight lips and moving past.
I never know what to say about your poems, because I’m not a poet; I adored “Poem for Dan” and “7:30,” and the image of a painter’s dropcloth was fantastic. Can’t say anything other than: I really enjoyed reading these!
Leave your response!