A Poem for May

No. 5, 1948 Jackson Pollock

I'm back writing after a short hiatus. I'm hoping more poetry will follow. This, just written, is a gift to my blog.

May through the Broken Window

The long-deserted house remained

somehow intact, panes only recently smashed.    

Emancipated darkness now howls out

past jagged glass. He blunted his mind

on what went before,

the sealed emptiness of the godforsaken place,

the rooms where no one entered,

the ghosts and ghouls who pressed faces

against the world, beating their fists

to be let out, to get out.

The pre-emptive panic much worse than

the release, the actuality, the reality

of standing there, reddened in the face

with a brickful of guilt and shame.

Shame threw the first stone.

Sunlight flooded to every corner.

The dirt and grime of history spread

like soot from a summer forlorn chimney,

aged and caked, mixed with twigs

from birds who nested on high,

about the floors, the mildewed furniture.

The tabletop is a stage for crows, finches

and blackbirds who flit in and about.

Chattering birdsong has re-entered

the vacuum of the kitchen.

They paint the gloom with white dung,

berry-laden sometimes, blotches of red and purple

enhance mundanity like Pollocks,

their artistry a universe of stars

and trailing comets.

Buttons of pilgrim mayflower

and laces of hawthorn tinged by pink

stretch through the void, sketching

charcoal figures in moonlight,

limbs of trees bearing witness.

Orla Fay