Love says trust me
And your heart breaks
Again, like a stone
That isnât supposed
To fracture,
By some ponderous law of pain
Or physicsâI say
If breaking my heart
10 times or 100
Pushes me, like a
Demi-urge, toward a kind
Of deeper
Love more meaningful
Existenceâthen,
Yeah.
Iâm ok with
That.
(C)2022 by Sanguine Woods
for JCCQ
*and Sophia, gratzi
#lgbtqia
ââ
Thatâs like a poem.
About pink.
And warm.
And ending.
And ice cream, peach.
And laughter dying out
Slowly from every summertime
Get-together everyone
In the whole wide world
Ever had on a holiday
With family and pinwheels
And little red white and blue flags
Sticking out of the short green grass.
Its peachfuzz voice says:
Weâre still free, People.
And then it goes to bed.
And weâre tired, tooâ
After all the talking and children
Playing and ladies laying
Out for the first suntan
Of the seasonâŚ
Where you fall asleep
Right there
In that cocktail light
With or without
A reason.
â(c)2021 by Sanguine Woods
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
â
Art by Richard Bawden (Royal Watercolor Society)
Photo shot with an iPhone 7+ by Shaun Roose from the 14,000 foot summit of Coloradoâs Sunlight Peak. (Facebook/Colorado Photography.)
O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice. June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
In vain to build.
O Heart, when Love’s sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter’s own release.
â
Photo: Smithsonian Garden
Photography by Kara Marcus (Facebook/Joe THATâS Colorado!)
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons â
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes â
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us â
We can find no scar,
But internal difference â
Where the Meanings, are â
None may teach it â Any â
‘Tis the seal Despair â
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air â
When it comes, the Landscape listens â
Shadows â hold their breath â
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death â
â
(Poem #320, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
Photo: South Platte River, Deckers, Colorado. Photographer unknown (Flickr).
Photography by Melanie Gosling (Facebook/Colorado Photography).
The Sanguine Woods 