The Grass Minstrel

Along Aquohee Creek

2012-03-03T20:47:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

In the syllabary

Sequoyah made

for his peoples’ tongue,

the marks that stand

for rivercane

look like letters spelling

Tao, the Way—

the way this relict patch

of rivercane still stands

shoulder to shoulder,

rooting the riverbank to home.

The way the people

wove it into their homes,

their baskets, and their lives.

The way the cane,

when hollowed,

sent flying home the darts

fletched with thistledown,

and all the fluted

notes that echo

home to the hearts

still hidden here

among the sycamore’s

white bones.

The way the turkey hen

bustles in canebrake

and the meadow

runs with quail.

The way the water

rings the heron’s leg

with gold and flows

downstream

like tears.

(first appeared in Written River 2:2, Winter 2011)

Descent

2012-02-23T17:25:00.000-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Be prepared for darkness

to overtake you unawares,

from the heart of the white sky.

Think how it flows

down the dark mountain,

rubs out the rock face

with its broad thumbs,

erases the edges of leaves

and moistens the bark of the maple

with absolute color.

It closes the door of the clearing

without a sound.

Think how it seeps

into the pores of your skin

and strokes your clavicles

with the touch of fingers

caressing the strings of a harp.

And think how your body

must resonate

with unseen rustlings

and with the myriad questions

filling your bones like mist.

(first appeared in Pinesong: Awards 2009, published by The North Carolina Poetry Society)

The Neighbor

2012-02-15T09:48:00.003-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

“The most we can say is that

the world is lila, God’s play”

—Huston Smith

The neighbor-lady’s mad.

They say her name is Lila,

but she always speaks in tongues.

Some days it’s beetles

that come flying off her tongue—

that tongue gray-green and curling

like the fiddlehead of a fern.

They put me in mind of Granny’s jewels

I pawned so long ago, them beetles,

the shine of their hard wings

so many colors in the lamplight.

They rattle loud as hail against the windowpane.

Other times she speaks nothing

but starfish and the house smells

of salt. They scuttle over the sandy floor

and under them wide blue skirts she always wears.

I don’t mind the butterflies—some purple,

and some with wings clear as glass—

but other days her tongue’s like pink elastic

and shoots out teeny frogs bright as sunrise,

only louder. I never know

what she’ll be speaking next—

snakes or peacocks or some great beast

with tawny shoulders and a wild green eye.

It ain’t natural. So I says to her,

I’m moving back to town—

I got to get away from the everlasting

clatter of your tongue. She just throws

back her head and laughs

birds.

(first appeared in EarthSpeak Magazine 9, Autumn 2011)

The Rosewood Bird

2012-02-03T09:17:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

summer mornings

your whistled tune

a bridge

into wakefulness

the valley echoes

tying the kite

to the lilac hedge

to sail alone

all afternoon you fashion

tethered dreams

fragrant shavings

curl from the planer

the child fancies

manes and beards

for a plywood menagerie

the birds you made

feeding their young

and flying

somehow

on mahogany wings

shape engrained

already in the seed

your hands

that guide the chisel

at the lathe

fitting the brass lid

on the memory jug

blue and white crockery

shattered into shards

your scarred hands made whole

summer evenings

the glow of your cigarette

under the elms

your gaze

far down the river valley

still folded

in a trunk

the sweater I wore

the day I learned

what you had done

(This tanka sequence, one of three winning sequences, appeared in Twenty Years Tanka Splendor, published by AHA Books in 2009 in celebration of twenty years of the Tanka Splendor Awards Contest .)

Quantum Dreams

2012-01-22T14:15:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Waiting for rain at two a.m.—

not these paltry, separate drops

pinging one-by-one on the metal roof,

but the sleeve of heaven

sluicing away whole days of dust.

Longing for rain at three a.m.—

instead thoughts come,

pinging against the skull—

no clear distinction

between observer and observed—

the act of looking

changes that which is.

Peek into the void

and a quantum particle pings

out of its dreamy, wavy state

into the hard reality of time and space.

(Does it manifest, perhaps,

in the eye of a goose,

or in some feathered tentacle

waving in the sea?)

So the mind that watches

alters what is real.

Can mind-states, then, move matter?

The faith, say, of a Mother Teresa—

bone-hard faith with feathers

like a flight of birds—

can it cause Way to open?

Write down these thoughts

in darkness. Use a quantum-quill

dipped in invisible ink.

Show no-one.

Rain begins at last.

--first appeared in Anatomy & Etymology 1:4, November 2011

Lord God of Bread Dough

2012-01-17T18:43:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that your life rise

like a new loaf

to be eaten warm

with plenty of butter,

salt or sweet.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that when words

with tiny wings

on their shoulders

flutter like strange angels

out of the night air,

you have pockets

full of bread crumbs

to lure them

onto the white page.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that you never

be caught listening

to the left side

of your brain

when the right side

is trying to tell you

something

known only to the yeast.

Pray to the lord god

of bread dough

that you stop needing

and start kneading

until your life

is firm and elastic

and does not stick

to anything at all.

Praise to the lord god

of bread dough

for unseen bubbles

that leaven this eternal flatness

into the delectable

multiplicity of forms.

Savor every crust.

Shawl of Stone

2012-01-09T19:02:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Deep beneath the solid pavement, sense this spinning ball of stone.

From the spine of distant mountains, hear the silent call of stone.

Somewhere past Orion’s belt, across the corner of the eye,

Out of nothing into darkness, burns the briefest fall of stone.

Is winter coming to a close? Walk the fallow, frost-heaved fields—

This heart where scattered shards lie broken. Build up the crumbling wall of stone.

Take one pebble, round and flat, skip it on the silver river.

See how many ripples echo, echo from so small a stone.

Well for water, hearth for flame, arch for passage, slate for name.

Lantern light on grave and bone: a sacred circle, all of stone.

Camellia petals at her feet, a Jenny-wren’s nest in her hair,

Who watches from the wildwood’s edge, with heart of magma, shawl of stone?

(This ghazal first appeared in The Ghazal Page Stone Radif Challenge issue, 2009)

Cipher

2012-01-04T16:49:00.001-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Braille lines on a dry leaf,

a scribbled epigram of ice,

the roots of trees in boldface underground,

and the doe’s bones—

knobs and facets written in the snow,

the lovely long articulation of the spine

hugging the dear earth—

a closing parenthesis.

But snow keeps falling,

each new flake

a word unspoken,

soft against the tongue.

(first appeared in Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems Winter 2008)

At the Turtle Hospital

2011-12-25T16:34:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Great maimed beasts swim listing in circles,

weights glued lopsided to shells like rippled sand,

drawing them down toward lost

unreachable depths.

Rescue a turtle drifting at sea

and you earn the right to name it, like Adam,

though its true name be always

unspeakable mystery.

If ever I saved a sea turtle floating,

I’d name it, mother, for you—

and you’d laugh,

you who taught me it’s all mystery, all holy,

fish and the leaping, moonlit illusion of fish,

sea wrack and driftweed,

dark tides and the body

bathed in luminescence,

the least, lost creature drifting toward home.

You, who after the stroke swam listing through time

on half-blind limbs, shut out

of the silted sea cave of memory

until at last you dove alone

into the deep welcoming ocean of home.

(first appeared in EarthSpeak 7, Spring 2011)

Poetry Plum

2011-12-20T13:43:00.003-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

I wonder who it is that names the colors—

those six thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine

hues and tints and shades, the possibilities of paint?

Who wraps and ties these splinters of the spectrum

in tidy packages of words—alchemy, nankeen, tassel—

packages that split and spill their rainbow

contents all across the Earth—lacewing, picnic,

charisma, quest. I want that job.

Can I be paid in colors—impetuous, carefree,

frolic, rain? Colors would lap around my ankles—

rapture, bubble, nautilus—and rise buzzing into air

as clear as gambol gold—bee and butter-up

and nuance vanishing among the trees at dusk,

the deepening shades of oakmoss, refuge, lark.

Slowly all the syllables of color leave the sky—

moonraker, lantern light, inkwell, stone

and sleep comes murmuring

the full spectrum of imagine—

enigma, daydream, ponder, soar.

Witch Hazel

2011-12-12T18:20:00.004-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

autumn

a handful of berries

opening

a blue glass bubble

of remembered light

burnishing

the trunks of birches

sorrow

the old crone’s shadow

on the white moth’s wing

dust motes

in a circle of light

the bubble

shrinking to a stone

inside the chest

stone

to build a fire ring

kindling

flame from ashes

before dusk

the scent

of apples—

bubbles rising

each a different mirror

to a changing face

hearthstone ashes

the price of wisdom paid—

but

can witch hazel bloom

so deep in winter

firelight fades

the old crone follows

the glint

of drifting bubbles

through the dark wood

(This tanka sequence first appeared in Lynx XXVI: 1, February, 2011)

Donors

2011-12-06T14:17:00.003-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

The out-breath of trees

rides through seawater

on the beautiful

biconcavity of cells

traveling in their innocent

round back to my heart

until the needle prick

diverts them into the plastic

bag that dangles at my side

and silently fills

until the lever trips

to interrupt the flow—

which will continue

in the veins of someone

whose name I do not know

but who breathes

the same sweet air as I—

gift of anonymous donors,

the narrow veins,

the tiny silent mouths,

the myriad leaves.

--first appeared in EarthSpeak 7, June 2011

The Fox

2011-11-28T18:34:00.002-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Listen

just outside the window

to the fox

whose single harsh bark

and running feet

connect the shuttered

windows of your house

to her own impenetrable burrow

under the root

in the wood

where she lives

her own incomparable life

knowing

how to travel in darkness

wait in silence

and seize

on tiny mysteries

in the grass.

--first appeared in Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems XIV:3, Spring 2011

Chalice

2011-11-21T08:46:00.005-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

the cap

of the acorn

empty of seed

the bowl of the hills

where the doe lies down

two hands cupped

for a trickle of water

naked

the face of rain-

hollowed granite

the orioles’ nest

windblown

vessel of eggs

the rachis of feathers

the hollow of bone

jack-in-the-pulpit

his sermon

the spathe

of the arum

empty of words

chambers

of nautilus

caverns at sea

auricle ventricle

salt pools of the heart

the house of the skull

its cellars of memory

the eye

in its orbit

this chalice of light

(This tanka sequence first appeared in Lynx XXVI:2, June, 2011)

Three Songs of the Body Eclectic

2011-11-14T14:06:00.006-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

1. Ossicles

Watching the fence swift—how the rough

gray bark of his skin vanishes into the rail

while blue flanks announce his readiness

to make more of his own inestimable kind,

I am gladdened by knowing

that inside the temple of my own ear

lie humming three ancient jawbones

of this small lizard’s kin—

the chain of ossicles, ancient migrants

through the planes and valleys of my skull,

three bones tiny enough to dance

all together on the head of a pin,

and dancing now to the eardrum’s rhythm,

transmitting to my grateful brain this feather of sound—

swift feet scritching on sundrenched cedar,

a message spoken in bone and token of kin.

2. Limbs

Fish’s fin, hippo’s hoof

and my own hand stroking

the firm gray flesh of flippers

that hide, beneath their streamlined shape,

bone for bone the bones of my open arms—

humerus, ulna, radius, thickened and stout,

finger bones lengthened and cunningly webbed

for fluid flight, spin and sea spume

and the whole curve of Earth enclosed

in the leaping dolphin’s arc, the sea-silvered

song of a mind as different and as kin

to mine as the common curves and linkage of our bones.

3. Mitochondria

How many of you, I wonder, sluice

down the drain each time I wash my hands—

you old invaders, now tenderly wrapped

in my own cells’ membranes and powering

my liver, kidney, lungs, the hundred thousand

daily squeezings of my heart? Your nearest kin

are named for Proteus, shape-shifting god of the sea,

slippery prophet. Could he have foreseen, I wonder,

this—panther, cuttlefish, dragonfly, me—

blithe symbiotic satchels of bacteria

at home inside our cells and there empowering

even the cauliflower convolutions of my brain,

and all of us, dear sisters, from the eel-grass to the eel,

made of the same astounding particles of matter—

live dust from ravaged stars—from which flow out

this tenuous thread of thought,

the mad illusion of the separate self,

and the charged, sea-changing pulse of wonder.

--first appeared in Anatomy & Etymology 1:4, November 2011

The Face Painter

2011-11-07T17:16:00.003-05:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

So you wake up in the morning

and it’s still raining

and your life is this puddle of gray

concrete and your feet are mired

in it all day long

until you see

waltzing down the street

to his own inner music

this skinny guy with a lopsided

topknot of dreadlocks

and bell-bottoms lettered in yellow paint

Peace Harmony Love Yourself

and he opens his satchel

and takes out a dozen cakes of paint

and a little pointy brush and begins

transforming his own face—

neon pink lines swooping outward

from the corners of his eyes,

a half-moon of silver dots on each cheek,

and somehow

the concrete around your feet

begins melting into a small rainbow—

a modest little rainbow tucked away

in one obscure corner of the cosmos—

but you can dance in its radiance

and suddenly

you want to take off your concrete

mask and paint the insides

of your eyelids with sunlight—

cerulean, lavender, emerald, rose.

Sometimes at Night

2011-10-30T13:54:00.005-04:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Sometimes at night the words

run through my mind

like sparkling water.

I cannot sleep but do not care

to stop the flow

even if no-one hears

except the trees

whose roots I hope

one day to enter

when my body and my words

are turned to ash and rise

through tiny channels in the wood

to write at last

with sunlight in the book

of many leaves.

Moss

2011-10-21T11:27:00.010-04:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

Inside

the broken bottle’s throat

and the white glass jar

that once held some healing unguent—

moss has grown,

making a green cushion

for the roots of wintergreen

with its tiny red berries;

making

out of dappled light,

a faint rustle of air,

an accidental splash of rain,

and the pulse

of its own invincible cells

living and dying

in their ancient, nearly audible

and undoubtedly musical

rhythm

a thimbleful

of absolutely new

and nourishing

Earth.

--first appeared in Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, XIV: 3, Spring 2011

Flying Blind

2011-10-17T18:16:00.005-04:00

by Jenny Ward Angyal

How exactly the wren’s body fits

the palm of my hand. How smoothly

the fan of the wing opens and shuts,

the windward edge of each gray feather

laddered with brown and gold.

The bird’s head hangs limp,

her neck snapped in the collision

with a wall she never saw—

one eye is missing. Yesterday

I touched a half-blind goldfinch

at the feeder, feasting on thistle seed

and unafraid. With side-set eyes,

a bird can see at once both crumb

and kestrel; the loss of an eye’s the loss

of half the world.

Once a girl

sat in a green meadow

with an open book; a one-eyed

sparrow settled on her knee,

and stayed, cocking its head

and preening--and there settled

over the girl a sense of being

as solid, as rooted, and as trusted

as the limb of an oak

and therefore capable in turn

of trusting the unseen

half of things.

Sixty years on,

I see my life’s been less

like a tree

and more

like a half-blind sparrow

blundering through thickets.

Which is why I gently place

the body of the wren

between the white oak roots,

the soft buff belly-down exposed

and the clenched, reptilian claws

extending toward the sky.

--first appeared in Pinesong: Awards 2011 published by the North Carolina Poetry Society