Cynthia Neely
Because Nothing's Ever Finished
– a cento series from Jane Hirshfield’s “The October Palace”
They Opened, Because It was Time and They Had No Choice
They open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness.
Ripeness is what falls away with ease.
The mouth swallows peach and says gold.
What enters, enters like that - unstoppable gift,
because you taste it as you were meant to.
~
Sunlight Never Reaches but the Earth Still Blooms
cobbled and rivered with all the green waters of earth,
the taste of things, cold and pure,
the murmur of falling, the fluvial, purling wash
the steep descent tasting of oceans,
the merest trace of sorrow, remnant salt,
the beating, breaking, scoured-out chimes of wave-scrub.
From glacier-lit blue to the gold of iguana,
a shiver of crayon yellows and reds, of violet
on stone-colored ground.
All day the world went on about its business.
I must have missed it.
Even the silkworm’s castings grew whiter, more strong.
~
For Fish, Water is Endless, for Birds, the Air
open-winged for those moments between world and world.
We name them, and naming, begin to see.
The deep fish rise to feed as if some riddle
assembled on thread so fine it is almost surmise,
though a shadow flickers, remembering.
They are fish going on with their own concerns.
~
Would Tenderness Wring the Heart Still of its Burdens
leaving only the dark salted circles
yellow, plump, a little bruised ?
The smooth and the scabbed, the wrinkled and lonely?
Each answer known before the question’s asked.
Ideas buzz the air like flies,
a plentitude that binds.
~
Again, the Wind Flakes Gold Leaf from the Trees
as these falling needles and leaves speak of return.
The poor had returned to their hunger
more and more creased each year, worn paper-thin,
in steady homeward weatherless migration
to be pounded down again, for what we’ve declared beautiful to be,
each half-starved rib communicative as Braille.
I too now wear that warning, and so pray
it is possible to cast yourself on the earth’s good mercy and live,
each of us pinned on the axis that spins out this dusk,
the night’s stampede of winds.
Only the wild scent of the earth will be left
and the angels look on, observing what falls: all of it falls.
~
Today, What Falls is Wavering
from the weight of too much seeing, too much seen.
Each time the found world surprises – that is its nature,
moving of shadows and grass,
in their sweetness and rustling.
Now see the dark-shelled flowers of thought unmade,
its many shades of gray.
These thought are yours – though I wish they were mine.
~
Whatever Asks, Heart Kneels and Offers to Bear
Why does my heart look back at me, reproachful?
Fold that loneliness, one moment, two, love, back into your arms.
Like new lovers taking their fill in the crowded dark,
their shadows’ chiasmus will fleck and fill with flies.
Such is the chaos that affection yields.
The heart’s machinery starts up again, hammering and sawing,
humming of flies on their isinglass wings,
Then it asks more and we give it.
– a cento series from Jane Hirshfield’s “The October Palace”
They Opened, Because It was Time and They Had No Choice
They open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness.
Ripeness is what falls away with ease.
The mouth swallows peach and says gold.
What enters, enters like that - unstoppable gift,
because you taste it as you were meant to.
~
Sunlight Never Reaches but the Earth Still Blooms
cobbled and rivered with all the green waters of earth,
the taste of things, cold and pure,
the murmur of falling, the fluvial, purling wash
the steep descent tasting of oceans,
the merest trace of sorrow, remnant salt,
the beating, breaking, scoured-out chimes of wave-scrub.
From glacier-lit blue to the gold of iguana,
a shiver of crayon yellows and reds, of violet
on stone-colored ground.
All day the world went on about its business.
I must have missed it.
Even the silkworm’s castings grew whiter, more strong.
~
For Fish, Water is Endless, for Birds, the Air
open-winged for those moments between world and world.
We name them, and naming, begin to see.
The deep fish rise to feed as if some riddle
assembled on thread so fine it is almost surmise,
though a shadow flickers, remembering.
They are fish going on with their own concerns.
~
Would Tenderness Wring the Heart Still of its Burdens
leaving only the dark salted circles
yellow, plump, a little bruised ?
The smooth and the scabbed, the wrinkled and lonely?
Each answer known before the question’s asked.
Ideas buzz the air like flies,
a plentitude that binds.
~
Again, the Wind Flakes Gold Leaf from the Trees
as these falling needles and leaves speak of return.
The poor had returned to their hunger
more and more creased each year, worn paper-thin,
in steady homeward weatherless migration
to be pounded down again, for what we’ve declared beautiful to be,
each half-starved rib communicative as Braille.
I too now wear that warning, and so pray
it is possible to cast yourself on the earth’s good mercy and live,
each of us pinned on the axis that spins out this dusk,
the night’s stampede of winds.
Only the wild scent of the earth will be left
and the angels look on, observing what falls: all of it falls.
~
Today, What Falls is Wavering
from the weight of too much seeing, too much seen.
Each time the found world surprises – that is its nature,
moving of shadows and grass,
in their sweetness and rustling.
Now see the dark-shelled flowers of thought unmade,
its many shades of gray.
These thought are yours – though I wish they were mine.
~
Whatever Asks, Heart Kneels and Offers to Bear
Why does my heart look back at me, reproachful?
Fold that loneliness, one moment, two, love, back into your arms.
Like new lovers taking their fill in the crowded dark,
their shadows’ chiasmus will fleck and fill with flies.
Such is the chaos that affection yields.
The heart’s machinery starts up again, hammering and sawing,
humming of flies on their isinglass wings,
Then it asks more and we give it.
--
Cynthia Neely’s first full-length collection, Flight Path, (2014) was an Aldrich Press Book Contest finalist. Broken Water (2011) won the Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry chapbook contest, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment and Passing Through Blue Earth (2016) won Bright Hill Press Chapbook Contest. Her work, both poetry and non-fiction, can be found in many print and online journals, including among others, Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge’s Pontoon, The Writers’ Chronicle, Cutthroat Journal, Naugatuck River Review and Terrain.org. She has been nominated for “Best of the Net” as well as had work included in several anthologies. Her latest collection is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.
Cynthia Neely’s first full-length collection, Flight Path, (2014) was an Aldrich Press Book Contest finalist. Broken Water (2011) won the Hazel Lipa Prize for Poetry chapbook contest, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment and Passing Through Blue Earth (2016) won Bright Hill Press Chapbook Contest. Her work, both poetry and non-fiction, can be found in many print and online journals, including among others, Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge’s Pontoon, The Writers’ Chronicle, Cutthroat Journal, Naugatuck River Review and Terrain.org. She has been nominated for “Best of the Net” as well as had work included in several anthologies. Her latest collection is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.