September 2016
Kate Sontag
sontagk@ripon.edu
sontagk@ripon.edu
I am co-editor (with David Graham) of After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf) and have published widely in journals and anthologies. Recently retired from Ripon College, I spend a lot of time reading drafts of poems to my husband and our two spaniels who are all very patient with me. If you love food and poetry, please check out Cooking With The Muse (Tupelo, 4/16) in which I have a little poem about cherry tomatoes; it is a stunning book of recipes, related literature, food culture & history, and photographs.
Author's Note: I've been working on a series of poems to accompany abstract pastels drawn by my mother which my sister and I discovered after her death. They all use Emily Dickinson in some way, shape, or form, at times simply quoting her but other times embedding whole poems of hers within mine as in "Pastel & Graphite With Window" (which can be seen when you read the last words down the right hand margin like an acrostic).
Grace Millar - untitled pastel on paper
To Tell One’s Name
We give you back to the Pacific that cradled you
cradling us, this house of windows and rooms
of transformation, this canyon of slides steadied,
reaching over generations its angle of repose,
this earth you seeded and raked, picked from
and taught us to love what grew from it, mottled
looseleafs, lettuces of bitterness, heirloom
tomatoes, baskets brimming, your straw hat
tilted just so in the sun, the nameless citrus tree
whose sour orange fruit you sweetened and
crushed into Patron on ice, pines you planted,
eucalyptus you shaped, rainbowed bougainvillea
trailing the fence, succulent and cactus blooming
on the deck, whiff of rosemary, mint, salt, all of it
we give back to you, Grace of beauty and charm
and goodness, Grace of brightness, splendor
and blossoming, Grace of mirth and humor,
Grace of sound, shining, persuasion, Grace
of hunger, instinct and inspiration, Grace
of roots and energy and seclusion, here where
your name repeats itself everywhere we look.
We give you back to the Pacific that cradled you
cradling us, this house of windows and rooms
of transformation, this canyon of slides steadied,
reaching over generations its angle of repose,
this earth you seeded and raked, picked from
and taught us to love what grew from it, mottled
looseleafs, lettuces of bitterness, heirloom
tomatoes, baskets brimming, your straw hat
tilted just so in the sun, the nameless citrus tree
whose sour orange fruit you sweetened and
crushed into Patron on ice, pines you planted,
eucalyptus you shaped, rainbowed bougainvillea
trailing the fence, succulent and cactus blooming
on the deck, whiff of rosemary, mint, salt, all of it
we give back to you, Grace of beauty and charm
and goodness, Grace of brightness, splendor
and blossoming, Grace of mirth and humor,
Grace of sound, shining, persuasion, Grace
of hunger, instinct and inspiration, Grace
of roots and energy and seclusion, here where
your name repeats itself everywhere we look.
Grace Millar - untitled pastel on paper
Seeing Double
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
–E.D.
Are they real or imagined balls of yarn, butcher thread
leftovers from family feasts, mismatched siblings of twine,
kite string rolled twice for meandering minds, sister disks
that share soft-edged illusion by staring them both down
as if optics matters more because they’re hard to place
and their placement is slightly distorted? Let them rest in
peace on the French antique farm table Mom bought with
the bundle of francs she won gambling in Cannes, or float
as windfall apples in tandem through the negative space
between them to bask in brisk autumnal air. Our eyes
adjust to each potential, transform the pair into essential
spheres, a still life of harvest moons reflected in murky water
or rounded bales of hay left to dry on fertile ground
until their yield in couplets the length of the earth
offers globes of copper wire split down the center
in a surrealist’s mirror, a framed Magritte field wielding
warmth from setting twin suns. If only we could ask her.
Find the source in plain sight like a Monet study left open
on the bookcase. Or by lamplight in a basket within baskets.
To touch them now is to rise in ruddy memory of the one
who might have drafted then taped askew her own impressionist
breasts to a black cardboard background when she was done.
Cutouts ourselves, her two daughters undone guessing, trying
to hold their loosely shelved legacy and themselves together.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
–E.D.
Are they real or imagined balls of yarn, butcher thread
leftovers from family feasts, mismatched siblings of twine,
kite string rolled twice for meandering minds, sister disks
that share soft-edged illusion by staring them both down
as if optics matters more because they’re hard to place
and their placement is slightly distorted? Let them rest in
peace on the French antique farm table Mom bought with
the bundle of francs she won gambling in Cannes, or float
as windfall apples in tandem through the negative space
between them to bask in brisk autumnal air. Our eyes
adjust to each potential, transform the pair into essential
spheres, a still life of harvest moons reflected in murky water
or rounded bales of hay left to dry on fertile ground
until their yield in couplets the length of the earth
offers globes of copper wire split down the center
in a surrealist’s mirror, a framed Magritte field wielding
warmth from setting twin suns. If only we could ask her.
Find the source in plain sight like a Monet study left open
on the bookcase. Or by lamplight in a basket within baskets.
To touch them now is to rise in ruddy memory of the one
who might have drafted then taped askew her own impressionist
breasts to a black cardboard background when she was done.
Cutouts ourselves, her two daughters undone guessing, trying
to hold their loosely shelved legacy and themselves together.
Grace Millar - pastel and graphite on paper
Pastel & Graphite With Window
Behind opacity’s sooty window, I’m
sticking to my self-portrait as nobody!
I’m disguised as tinder, you see? Who
holds a torch recognizes me. Sparks are
beginning. I feel them scorch. Do you?
Take my hazel eyes, palomino hair. Are
my bridle and reins too rusty for you
to ride? Please critique. Does nobody —
care my stocky legs have vanished too?
Look into my tarnished mirror. Then
raise a symbolic barn. Perhaps there’s
a new nest of swallows, haystacks, a
stallion beside a chestnut mare, a pair
in love I might have been half of
once upon a time. Hide photos of us!
Wipe sweat off the brush. Don’t
whisper or cinch. Go to hell, tell!
But don't tell a soul I know. They’d
find us, put up a poster, advertise —
for the hostess about to hand you
a glass of sherry. Those guests, you know!
Pencil me into my invisible past. How
when during dessert he called me a dreary
horse’s ass at Chez Panisse in order to
knock the wind from me I wanted to be —
Alice Waters or Emily D – a somebody!
Fall off the saddle. Get back on. How
do others do it, especially in public —
make resurrection look so easy? I’d like
to be alive again, garden and gallop a
fairytale path. Think princess, Frog —
dumped into a swamp. Here's to
kissing the prince goodbye. Go tell
him I'm happy as a rump. This one’s
framed with my blank hymnal name
scribbled in gold. Inside I drive the
flies wild with my tail the livelong
day. My daughters born in June —
and April – would love listening to
these midsummer nights make an
old off-key shut-in sing, admiring
her grin climbing out of the Bog!
Behind opacity’s sooty window, I’m
sticking to my self-portrait as nobody!
I’m disguised as tinder, you see? Who
holds a torch recognizes me. Sparks are
beginning. I feel them scorch. Do you?
Take my hazel eyes, palomino hair. Are
my bridle and reins too rusty for you
to ride? Please critique. Does nobody —
care my stocky legs have vanished too?
Look into my tarnished mirror. Then
raise a symbolic barn. Perhaps there’s
a new nest of swallows, haystacks, a
stallion beside a chestnut mare, a pair
in love I might have been half of
once upon a time. Hide photos of us!
Wipe sweat off the brush. Don’t
whisper or cinch. Go to hell, tell!
But don't tell a soul I know. They’d
find us, put up a poster, advertise —
for the hostess about to hand you
a glass of sherry. Those guests, you know!
Pencil me into my invisible past. How
when during dessert he called me a dreary
horse’s ass at Chez Panisse in order to
knock the wind from me I wanted to be —
Alice Waters or Emily D – a somebody!
Fall off the saddle. Get back on. How
do others do it, especially in public —
make resurrection look so easy? I’d like
to be alive again, garden and gallop a
fairytale path. Think princess, Frog —
dumped into a swamp. Here's to
kissing the prince goodbye. Go tell
him I'm happy as a rump. This one’s
framed with my blank hymnal name
scribbled in gold. Inside I drive the
flies wild with my tail the livelong
day. My daughters born in June —
and April – would love listening to
these midsummer nights make an
old off-key shut-in sing, admiring
her grin climbing out of the Bog!
©2016 Kate Sontag
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF