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Tuesday, May 21, 2019

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

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