When 2019 Arrives

Resolutions are the arrow to the land across the water

This year drains from the grass, the river swells to the edge

Of the sandy cliff until you feel the float of the ground itself

Sundered from the stable upland across the drowned sky.

Resolve to go before the hollow places

Bored into the foundation by evaporated friendships

Empty and fill again with the run-off years,

Cracking the clay and shearing movement.

Resolute as the sun saluting the day:

I have been proud to light your specificities

I have been proud to feed your breathing

Do not melt upon the waters. Go.

---

I've been watching end-of-the-year videos on BookTube for the past several days and thinking about how the books of 2018 have passed through my life, the way this year the news in general has felt like a weekly disaster vlog and just, in general, letting myself miss people and places I've cared about. 2018, for me, has been a host of minor instabilities strung on a spine of retrenchment--minor fender benders, losing for a second time a library home-away-from-home, having the weather interrupt plans...minor stuff but adding up to the feeling that things are careening a little closer than comfortable. We're out more (looking at Christmas lights, etc.) and so is the rest of the city and so you see more wreckage and emergency lights as well as holiday lights.

When the image above was chosen for The Sunday Muse, my first reaction was "Yeah, no, I'm more burrow-into-the-clay than set-sail-into-the-evening." But...retrenching didn't really lead to any breakthroughs. Sitting at home with my writing didn't lead to writing. The house is not substantially better organized. I'm Sara in that scene in Labyrinth with everything on my back but unable to leave anything behind. 

So the first reaction isn't the poem. 

Hoping you and yours have a remarkable 2019 and that the journey leads you to a good vantage point for 2020 and onward. Thanks for being part of this blog and thanks to those at Poets United and The Sunday Muse for the inspiration--the breath--for this blog.

Best wishes,

Chrissa

Yep, photobombed my own photo. We went out on my birthday to look at lights in Prestonwood, a wonderful neighborhood for light viewing if you're to the north of Houston. Very grateful to all those families, who work to give this gift, despite clogged streets, every year. Happy New Year!

Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria

A single song upon which the year turns between rosin and bird
Sharing our holidays, our sun and snow and sugar, on a pivot
Of rhythm--our forest lives among our voices, feeds us,
Gives us our throat, grows tall enough to sieve the high sun,
Weaving the light with unleaved fingers,
Draping warmth around our shoulders.

Wishing everyone a merry, happy, joyful holiday season, a happy Christmas, a merry New Year, and the joy of hope.

-- Chrissa

Beyond the Curtain

How do you get behind the curtain?
Not where the man pulls the levers,
Nor where Mom piles apples & oranges
In the basket beside the chocolate,
Nor where Dad suggests calculating toys

Further
Behind the curtain that hides a breath,
A single candle in your fist;
Your exhausted contemplation of great,
Felt angels--gold trumpets against purple--
Midnight in the church;
The heat of prayers condensing to amber light,
To wax in your grip, songs to beeswax and incense
In your throat; recess to a cold Texas Christmas
Lifted, dark and bright, on a pale river of stars and wax

Behind that curtain--
The one that falls over your eyes every night.

Holiday Spirits/At the Goblin Fireside

Under the waterglass, where I step into the shear street,
Smooth and deep and bright, there is a fire in the window
Glowing deep as chill, oncoming night--

At the goblin fireside, wrapped in scarves and stories,
Voices flicker in the window, telling tales strong as liquor
Against the frozen burn of oncoming night.

I have lost my way to Christmas, muffled are the bells,
But the blue flames of goblins, their fell, fey angels circling
Like a flock before oncoming night...

Here there are no lost princesses, no hidden heirs, only
Fey angels singing quests above the silent city bells
Deep within oncoming night.

In the old city, on a floor reflected high above
The stones, I hear those snowbound angels tuning
Their voices of oncoming night.

Linking up with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. It is variously chilly, warm, and stormy here just north of Houston. Holiday plans dangle on the whims of storms and, lately, I have been more inclined to sit on the couch and brood rather than actively enjoy the season. Except for Christmas lights, which I enjoy as often as I can. That's probably one of the reasons I enjoy this picture, where the colors are just a bit heightened in the reflection, as if the building is trying on something warmer or dreaming about it. 

I'm also starting to build my 2019 TBR, so if anyone has suggestions for good books to read (your book?), please let me know in the comments. :) Hoping this finds everyone at the beginning of a good week!

-- chrissa

Map

Drag a Sharpie between two points...
Between two days, between a drive and a walk
Between a day in the yard and a day on the shore--
Tea-colored saltwater, brown pelicans drop low,
Charcoal pewter dolphins bow at the nose of boats,
Whatever that might be called.
A line between experience and ignorance.
Calculate the angle's narrowing to today
While other minutes fade and rise.
It's only the skin of time.

Gaping, it swallows you whole.
The moment and the thought, freckles and all
Where you have triangulated dreams on your skin,
Where the past has marked you like a star map--
Your own star's very own map--you are now
Part of the feast of a celestial dragon,
Inhaling, gulping the buffet of space and time
Air and flesh mingle behind its eyes
Neurons like water and birds, reading
Your Sharpie lines.

Water swirls like clouds as the constellation swerves
To follow the marks, to find a dream.

Sharing with Poet's United for today's Poetry Pantry and with The Sunday Muse for today's Muse. The image inspiration is from The Sunday Muse. A note on the text--Sharpies are a brand of permanent marker. Hope everyone's having a good reading/writing week. :) 

-- Chrissa

Down Where the Violas Breathe

Down where the violas breathe
On the undertone of frontal breezes
Where a paw's sharp click calls brick
The edge of the known world--
Where tigers fly in scarlet armor--
Where the the stories creep in the shadows
Like wary anoles--
Down there, on the silver concrete
That breaks in floes
Just beneath the bushes--
There is the archipelago of weather
Where we watch the hummingbirds
Drinking in the wake of hurricanes;
There we watch the waters fall
As if underneath a mountain;
There we trace the vine's branches
That tie the pots in uncertain rafts
Of dragon, chrysanthemum, and lily--
There we will go when the story begins,
Cast off from the landing where all boats
Launch, from the edge of a continent
That rose up from a grassy sea.

Sunlight, Random Acts Thereof

It moves the dogs along the couch,
Toward the tile; invisible radiant damage
Itches beneath my shirt and I break a limb
From the aloe leaning thick-leaved, sharp
Against the west window.

It drowns the parking lot stark white
Pricking out each needle of the three pines,
Forest memorial, in a concrete retaining yard
In between the yellow deliver lane, last row,
And the undeveloped land.

It dries away to darkness cool on my arm
As we wait for the cars ahead to catch
The light beneath the freeway, to float
On fires remembered in thick shadows
Curling underneath us.

Season of the Queen

Filtered sunlight is pouring through the cages
Beneath Wal-Mart's skylights; I close my eyes
Anchored but shifting in this slow line
When a voice slips over my shoulder.

She loves the way hazelnuts taste in the snow.
They taste like lumber to her; she imagines
Devouring all the towns below us.

I glance back; he adjusts his tuxedo cuff,
Smiles--stiffly--reaches out,
Tap-dancing his fingernail
Along the rim of my Nutella.
His hands are empty but I smell roses,
Frost, the way a garden might, frozen
Beyond glass doors, apart from a ball.

She's never understood chocolate;
Too brittle by the time she swallows...
Nothing ever melts on her lips.

I nod. Some people just don't like chocolate,
Like some people shop in tuxedos, some in PJs.
I'm in shorts in the middle of December.
He stares at the bottles and boxes
Jerking down the conveyor, eyes dark.
It hits everyone, I think, in the line.
An existential question just before they're
Committed, supplies flowing toward check-out.

His voice shivers down my shoulders.
She's deposed but we're still getting married.
She doesn't call me Kay anymore...I miss it,
Oddly. You'd think love was being seen 
But with her love might have been 
Becoming frosted beneath her gaze
With all the dreams she's had since time
Woke starlight to rim the darkness 
Of her eyes. I was never Kay 
Except for her, in the cold.

When he smiles, I want to strike a match,
To light the mini candles in the shelves;
To commit votive arson for fear and fairy tales.

She didn't let me shop for years
But we're out of salt.

He sets a large blue box behind the Nutella.
I pay for it, goosebumps on my calves,
Telling myself the a/c is confused by seasons
Out of sequence, broken as rhymes in line
As he continues to speak of love
And the way the world might freeze
If she loved it half as much as him.

Sharing with Poets United and The Sunday Muse, image linked from The Sunday Muse. Hope everyone's December has begun as it should...it's 80 degrees just up the road from Houston and not feeling all that seasonal yet but the dogs are happy for the sunshine (they're converting it into nap-onium as we speak) and...yeah...that's the way the week begins. 

-- Chrissa