The Bird Door Jamb on My Desk (working draft)

is intended to keep doors open,

but I let her hold back bills instead.

She is fixed on a wedge of iron,

wings at her sides, tail draped along the seam

where they joined her two halves

even as a part.  She’s always looking down

as if she’s here to serve the door

and nothing more.  Does she have an opinion

on doors? Should they be forced open

when they want to close? What gave me the right

to decide?  Let the door close on this bedroom.

Shut out the hall light, the sounds of downstairs life. 

Too meek to sing she just stands there.

Unable to move.  Stuck.

Looking down, the suggestion

of a bow.  We are birds of a feather.  

©2012 Cindy Veach

Untitled Cento (working draft)

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill

I could have dared the loss.

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended.

The knotted hurt will slacken in the breast

changing everything carefully.

Heart, so subtle now, and trembling

I, too, sing America

and everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

I have had to learn the simplest things.

To see if the world is there, is flat,

I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world.

You have your destiny to chip and eat.

I cast for fish that pleased my eye

and ran away to where

there were no rootless Christmas trees.

Each path leads both out and in.

You are my freedom.  And they let me be

like a breath, or like anything

each minute the last minute.

The day shall never end, we think.

My love, if you have a soul, don’t tell me yet.

Where we are.  Sometimes

at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would.

Dream after dream after dream walking away through it

invisible invisible invisible

while far below us, flaring in the dark,

the stars go out

shouldering the picture that we call the world

and me wondering how anything fragile survives

It’s true     there are moments

closer and closer together

here in the night.

How I would like to believe in tenderness—

in this light which is just a fact, like darkness.

                                                We take

unholy risks to prove

you were not

dead.

Robert Frost, H.D. TS Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Louise Bogan, Langston Hughes, Theodore Roethke, Charles Olson, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, William Staffor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, May Swenson, Marie Ponsot, James Dickey, Denise Levertov, Robert Bly, David Wagoner, John Ashbery, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, James Wright, Philip Levine, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, Sylvia Plath, Wendell Berry, Leroi Jones, Diane Wakoski

©2012 Cindy Veach

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If You Want to Make a Book (working draft)

Bone Folder:

You must not give in to the urge

to crease the paper with your nail

and instead take up the bone folder. 

You must fold in the direction

of the grain.  If you go against it

the paper will resist. 

Catch Word:

There are laid lines and wove

lines and either will accept

the catch word which holds

your place in case you get lost

in the words. It will help you

find your way to the next page

and ensure the story makes sense.

Creep:

Avoid creep – the phenomenon

where each page gets longer

until when all is said

and done the inner pages stick out

past the cover.  There are some things

even a bone folder can’t fix.

This is one of them.

On the Other Hand:

If you fold against the grain the way

the paper breaks and ruffles

might feel good against the fat

of your thumb.  If you forgo catch

words you might discover a better

story.  And creep could be a way

to change things up instead of keeping

them under the covers.

In Other Words:

Do not follow my example.

Invite the paper to resist.

Insist on creep and never

use catch phrases. 

©2012 Cindy Veach

Ever (draft)

Twice the table tulips drank
all the water in the glass.
The first time I refilled it

they revived. The second time,
half as many limped back, pale,
washed out, but alive.

Last night I met a fox. Eye to eye
the narrow silver face watched
me walk the dog. This morning,

the depression where he spent the night
beside a young tree was still warm,
but will I see him again?


©2012 Cindy Veach

Spring Fever (draft)

I know how to shake

off the snow, bring bees.  My hands

open and close on thin air, rub themselves

together until a fire starts low and leads

every twig to the promised trough

of short lived petal plush.  I know

where the mean swan sits

on her clutch of eggs – a stripe of white

behind a curtain of cattails

and all that is to come.

©2012 Cindy Veach

Late Bloomer (draft)

I am the last, the stubborn, I refuse,

hold tight, twist into this new

season of light.  I am willful, stuck. I am

the last, the hold out. I breathe no

but my rough skin gives in

to garnet nubs, prickly goose flesh.  I push

out the sky, become what you want.

©2012 Cindy Veach

Harbinger (draft)

I am the first, the hint, my leggy

sticks of yellow chintz beat out all the others.

I am a shock of saffron in a tangle of gray.

I am the first, the wish, sunshine not

shadow.  My sparklers ignite

when the light begins to shift.

Here I am again, the first,

the one who says enough. 

My bright limbs won’t let up.

©2012 Cindy Veach