TUESDAY POEM - To Poetry by Melissa Green

               TO POETRY     

               I have not forgotten you. You were taken away. Suddenly, 

               terribly, Eros kissed me on the mouth, inhaled my songs, 

               and from his throat roared out a fusillade of notes, 

               black crows that hurtled up to pierce the thunderheads.

               

               Violent hoof beats printed my heart as when one falls in love, 

               passion filling me with thorns of light. Wildfires that blazed

               for no one. My hands awoke. I could not stop their fury, 

               their flurry, their hurried need, a hurt and hunger so fierce,

               my hair turned white as the weave of the pages I drew to me, 

               pristine except where I left my mark: pen, brush, paint.

               I hardly sleep now, and when mornings come, reach up

               and break off a piece of the sun to feed on, its taste a burning

     

               on my tongue of crimson, violet, viridian, ultramarine. 

               Pages fill with hieroglyphs, spill with ciphers and runes. 

               Ask for me and you will find me changed, utterly new. 

               My hands, now taloned, are sleek white birds in flight.


               Melissa Green

       

Melissa Green is an exceptional poet whose work is well known to many of us. She is an Alumni member of our Tuesday Poem community. Melissa's luminous, authoritative poems speak for themselves; any attempt on my behalf to elaborate on what is already here would distract and detract. This morning, I flew her a line 'summarizing' her fiercely inspired poem and invited her to send one back. 

C - "To Poetry is a powerful expression of the sheer force and unstoppability of the creative process - yours, mine and ours ('ours' being that of the Collective)."  

M - "Yes, that's it--to be possessed by Eros is to be inhabited by a god, and the sheer force and power of that cannot be controlled--our fury, flurried, hurried needful hands are feeling the overwhelming energy, compulsion and pressure of being filled with it. . ." 

This week's poem on the TP is Revolver by Samuel Wagan Watson, chosen by Australian poet Catherine Bateson. 

"From my balcony I can read a strong poem that the moon has

                                                   pasted on the river. Everything is quiet. . . "

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.