WIND WHEEDLED
POETRY BY BLAKE STEELE
FILE OPENED 10/17/97
A...
ALL DAY I'M WATCHING,
AS I PASS THE POTENTIALITIES
OF THE MYSTERIOUS OTHER
I DO NOT KNOW
AUTUMN ENCOUNTER
AUTUMN ON SOME STREET
C...
CRAZY WISDOM
D
DENSITIES
(Inspired by Mary Oliver)
E...
ECHOES FROM THE BLUE BOY
(Jean Giono)
F...
FALL
REFLECTIONS
FIRE GROWLS, AND RIGHTFULLY
FROM A LETTER TO LI'L DEB WHO LOVES
DARK WEATHER MORE THAN ANYTHING
FROM YU XUANJI
(843-868)
H...
HOW IT IS WITH THE WILD BODY
I...
I HAD A GOD ONCE
I'M WAKING UP AND DREAMING
I
NEVER KNEW A MAN WHO THREW
IT'S A LILLY DAY...
IT IS IN THIS POETRY THAT I KNOW
WHAT IS CLEAR AND TRUE
L...
LEAPING OUT OF
THE DEADLIEST SNARE
LI'LDEB LILLY
LITTLE REVELATIONS
LOVING SILENCE
M...
MEDITATIONS UPON RELIGIOUS STATUES
P...
POTENTIALITY
T...
THE CREST OF LOVE
THE MISSION OF THIS POETRY
THE WILD CHRIST
THE WILD, WIDE, OPAL EYED
W...
WAKING THE SOUL
WE ARE HERE FOR LIFE
WILD SANITY
WIND CAJOLED
WIND
CRAZY
Y...
YOU MAY DREAM...
LAST POEM IN FILE: LITTLE REVELATIONS
-----------------------------------------------
WAKING
THE SOUL
Would you wake up your soul?
Walk then somewhere, anywhere,
through a field, over a hill,
down a lane,
and touch the sky with your fingers...
Then turn to complement the roses
for their dresses,
and the way they watch the ocean
all day with patience,
and
how they love the summer garden's
starry skies
when they, in black dresses,
drift in dreams of fragrance.
You are waking up to seek your soul
that hides somewhere in happiness,
(a secret poet in an unpoetic age),
that dips its naked body
in pure colors and hides
in every color of the day;
that paints itself black,
like the Christ child's skin,
and runs wild and sacred in the night;
that, gray-eyed and innocent,
looks
quietly upon you
in morning's light
waiting for you to sing
until all your sorrows are sung away
and you lean against a wall
and
laugh at bird song,
and laugh at your hands and feet...
and laugh at children laughing,
and laugh at lover's awkward loving,
until your knees are buckling
as your soul slips through
your laughter
and makes you.
I'M WAKING UP AND DREAMING
I'm waking up and dreaming
of billowing red wings
rooted into my thin shoulder blades
as I stare out of the window
at a blank, gray day.
Today,
the Technicolor phenomenon
of an Indian Summer
has shrunk down to the size
of a golden, pollen-heavy bee
and slipped into the
deep throat
of a dying iris,
disappearing in a purple mist.
It is a day when deer
are licking up
the
last fresh colors of flowers,
storing summer in their bellies
because winter is bleakly ambling
down from Alaska,
pillaging the country side,
rattling its skinny bones.
I'm a half season behind the seasons,
having just recently fallen in love again
with summer sun,
hot stones by cold rivers,
the sounds of flies and bees.
But the round wheel turns
and all things that flow in acceptance
fall into natural rhythms
which teach spiders to weave webs
for little gnats and mayflies,
which thicken red deer fur,
and
paint the mind
with yellow fire shining in frigid nights.
Autumn brilliance is here...
but will it be gone
when I suddenly wake up to love
the glory of dying things?
ECHOES FROM THE BLUE BOY
(Jean Giono)
Break nothing, tear nothing, stifle nothing,
efface nothing, let the whole round world
of blue air and green seas, of stars
and planets, and countless waves
course through the embrace of two
innocent lovers. Let honey flow
from lip to lip in words and kisses.
It is meant to be like this,
no gesture forbidden, all love-born
and breathing, pouring silver life
in shivers, in the shaken bells
of laughter, in the brightness
of eyes shining in eyes...
As summer fruit swells, gorged
with sunlight, and leaves shimmer
their own leaf-laughter in the breeze,
so our hearts are to be lush with life
and free to love with Love's wisdom,
that architect of rivers and the rhythms
of years.
WIND CAJOLED
(Or,
she would use wooden songbirds
to lure wild birds into her cage)
The wind came by,
lime green,
with
her young chest
full of tender leaves,
and wheedled me,
laughing about my greatness.
But I knew she was testing me,
with
that fountain of light
spurting through her eyes.
She wanted to see
if I was light enough
for the airy ride
to paradise,
or if I would sink
dark as the soul
of a stone
by the weight
of my own
self-measurement
of importance.
MEDITATIONS UPON RELIGIOUS STATUES
These saints, standing in cold silence
with frozen hair and
fixed eyes,
weep within their stone bodies
that we have made them thus...
for their hearts are far away:
cart wheeling down green hills;
swimming naked with cherub children
in silver streams;
climbing huge, shimmering trees
with six-winged seraphim;
throwing their arms open
to the wild winds of God;
laughing at the beauty of stars;
and praying for us in heaven's ecstasies
that we would wake up!
raise
our voices against injustice in the world,
learn to cherish what is mortal,
and come to them at lastÑ
through love's fullest surrenderÑ
ready to preserve at all costs
heaven's freedom!
WE ARE HERE FOR LIFE
&nbs