February 2023
Bio Note: I love moving words around. I love pushing paint around. The abstraction of thought or idea gives me great satisfaction. The word revise—to re-examine is great fun. I start with paper or canvas and move things around—words, lines, stanzas, and in painting I add and subtract. I try to avoid the obvious even in the plain spoke. I’ve published here and there and surprisingly won a few contests both in poetry and painting. I write every day for the joy of it.
Another City Day
Heavy winds first thing —
soot rising up
against high brick walls,
rattling the sky-pink windows
before the city can
set its measure and tempo,
settling its ash on park bench,
on flowers, on lamp poles,
on street scattered newsprint,
a neighborhood in its cycle —
commerce overriding
morning’s promised calm —
the stained bridge
flashing its rusty red traffic
like a siren in the street,
bird clouds rising up
to their own measure and tempo
announcing another day of chaos.
A Line Drawn
First thing and the house wakes,
a west wind bending its bones,
stretching up and out and over
the seed clouds and down
into the weed-tangled lawn
held momentarily
in a weathered balancing act,
snow patterned like flecked ink,
mark making — house, wind,
worry in an icy swirl, my pen
shaky as a cracked branch
against the sharp edge
of a blackbird hanging
in the high left corner,
an artistic testament to the day.
Begin with idea, one said,
begin with image, said another.
I will begin with line.
Flyover
Plane after plane traveling over
lake, tree, lawn, my spackled rooftop,
prompting a stay-at-home introspection
through glass, through snow, through fog.
Some days I want to be up there.
I want to distance myself from this chaos,
loosen the fear of height and murky water,
every dull societal judgement.
But mostly I want to be here in this
space of boredom and relative balance.
I want to believe that travel is to live
an untethered reality — the wishful fool.
Don’t land in this barren landscape, don’t
visit or pretend to understand my ways,
keep flying over to the next city, the next craze,
the next astonishment. I promise to stay here.
©2023 Mary Wehner
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