November 2015
When I think of debts (other than those to family), I think first of libraries and librarians – God bless them every one. A college professor for more than 30 years, I taught first at Oregon State and since 1992 at Linfield College. Five books of poems carry my name on their spines, including an Oregon Book Award winner (1989) and the most recent two from Jessie Lendennie’s Salmon Poetry, which, delightfully, has a mailing address without a single number in it.
Editor's Note: Mystified by this strange and wonderful poem, I asked Lex about its origin. He said, "It came from an offhand comment one of my colleagues in biology made — namely that everything on Earth is made from the same stuff. And it also comes from watching choirs over the years, watching faces singing..."
The Joy of Human Faces
They are pyracantha berries
and the wrists and hips of roses.
They are the spring and ease of pine needles,
the rigidities of spruce.
They are flat tin and corrugated tin, glass
thinned to its certainties,
glass shaped to a palm for drink –
simple water and bottled champagne.
They are chicory, gravel and oaks,
the mucous of slugs,
sea palms, mollusks, the orange-footed birds.
Pasture and stones.
They are sheilings, bog runnels and peat.
Steeled wire and leaf mulch,
window screens, the flies inside and out.
They are the breath of deer
bedded on a hillside in the sun.
They are skunks’ eyes,
otter fur, clouds arrived and gone,
clouds on the way.
They are constellations and time,
birth when they sing,
choir and the feathers of birds,
iridescent, the blue
and the black. When they sing,
it’s song we breathe —
what we hear, what they are.
from Starting from Anywhere, Salmon Poetry, 2009
The Joy of Human Faces
They are pyracantha berries
and the wrists and hips of roses.
They are the spring and ease of pine needles,
the rigidities of spruce.
They are flat tin and corrugated tin, glass
thinned to its certainties,
glass shaped to a palm for drink –
simple water and bottled champagne.
They are chicory, gravel and oaks,
the mucous of slugs,
sea palms, mollusks, the orange-footed birds.
Pasture and stones.
They are sheilings, bog runnels and peat.
Steeled wire and leaf mulch,
window screens, the flies inside and out.
They are the breath of deer
bedded on a hillside in the sun.
They are skunks’ eyes,
otter fur, clouds arrived and gone,
clouds on the way.
They are constellations and time,
birth when they sing,
choir and the feathers of birds,
iridescent, the blue
and the black. When they sing,
it’s song we breathe —
what we hear, what they are.
from Starting from Anywhere, Salmon Poetry, 2009
©2015 Lex Runciman