Tuesday, February 18, 2014

TUESDAY POEM | Pond by T. Clear




Cup of Water, Cup of Sky  |  CB 2014


                     POND

                          We roamed beyond subdivisions
                          to this rain-brimming vacancy in some
                          city planner’s scheme. Not lovely,
                          but a version of heaven wet enough
                          to lure amorous toads whose eggs
                          we scooped into Folger’s cans.
                          Sloshed home, the rank goo
                          dripping a slithery trail.
                          We set them hatching in a fishbowl,
                          floated bits of boiled romaine.

                                     This is a common story:
                                     a patch of forest slashed in an afternoon,
                                     a clearcut of nettles, salal, bracken.
                                     Tiger lilies in their forgotten glade wrenched, ripped.
                                     Lots flagged, foundations poured.

                          And then into the worm barrel
                          out back, growing less finny each day.
                          Finally springing high enough
                          they leapt beyond borders
                          into what remained of murmuring woods,
                          the decrescendo of frogsong
                          becoming the planet’s
                          inexorable hum.

                          T. Clear



Pond was first published in Cascadia Review in their June 2013 issue, the first of five of T. Clear's poems to appear in the journal over the course of a week - each one finely, tautly-wrought; each one differently atmospheric, graceful and gritty. These are poems in which noise is hushed and the earth's subtler music is allowed to come through.
  
In Holy Week, T writes

                      All was new or new to me

this one line a distillation or container for her ever-alert poet's eye, ear and heart. She writes into and out of our always-in-motion, oft chaotic, ever-renewing world.  

Friend and fellow poet, Melissa Green, posted a comment on the Cascadia site that reiterates these qualities of T's sensibility and voice  - "How wonderful to have a week’s worth of your poems available all at once. Congratulations! So many of your themes are familiar–apple picking, fishing with your father (so moving! the gifts of that day!), a Catholic Easter– but the details of your language color them as yours and no one else’s, and beautifully poignant."  

In her Statement of Place on the Cascadia site, T writes, "I was born in Seattle and have lived joyfully in the Pacific Northwest for fifty-six years. In my travels to other landscapes across the planet, there is always the ache to return to this topography of foothills and craggy peaks, of saltwater and freshwater always in easy reach." 




Please visit the Cascadia Review website to enjoy more of T's poems and click on the quill below for this week's Tuesday Poems





Michelle Elvy is this week's Tuesday Poem editor - and hub-sub editor for the coming three months. She has chosen this year's Takahe prize winning poem Uncoupling by Jac Jenkins -


                                 "Ice clasps its thorny cloak with filigreed
                                  brittle lace against my breast
                                  bone. The pin sticks my skin when I inhale. . . "




4 comments:

  1. Oh I love the wetness of this poem, how I can feel and smell it all. This poem speaks to me - so close to nature, so full of life in all its grimy and muddy reality. And the hum at the end. I love that, too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just love this poem Claire and T. It reminds us that nature is boss...and the beauty of the last verse encompasses the idea for me of nature continuing whatever people do to it. Finally springing high enough

    they leapt beyond borders

    into what remained of murmuring woods,

    the decrescendo of frogsong

    becoming the planet’s

    inexorable hum.
    Thank you both for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I just love this poem Claire and T. It reminds us that nature is boss...and the beauty of the last verse encompasses the idea for me of nature continuing whatever people do to it. Finally springing high enough

    they leapt beyond borders

    into what remained of murmuring woods,

    the decrescendo of frogsong

    becoming the planet’s

    inexorable hum.
    Thank you both for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete