Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

A Poem in Progress: #13– April 13, 2016

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Number 13

For My Sister, On Her Birthday

Though I’ve known you my whole life long,
my life cannot be not long enough
to know you well enough. This song,
though rhyme and measures are quite rough—
a little choppy, off-the-cuff—
could not be off-key, cannot be wrong.

I can’t count how many times you
have helped me, all unasked, true heart.
A thousand miles away, still you knew
if I were sad, mad, enthralled by art—
or pierced by remorse or conscience’s dart—
you’re always there to talk me through.

Your peerless art inspires me,
shows how to frame a quiet scene,
from orange dawn to turquoise sea
to forest’s heart of tender green.
Karla, you pour luck into “13”
like most pour a cup of tea—

routinely and effortlessly—
This morning, I want to say
I hope that everything you see,
everything chance brings your way,
gives sparkle and shine to your birthday,
as knowing you does, every day, to me.

Love, Leslie

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Until Tomorrow!

Leslie

A Poem in Progress: #12– April 12, 2016

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Twelve

Kelmscott Manor, Attics
(platinum print, Frederick H. Evans, 1896)

So these inverted rafters and ghostly glow,
these soft-lit rough-hewn beams like
internal buttresses, and this empty space
with it twin invitations leading out—
on the left, the five white stairs ascending
to a blackened door; on the right, sunlight
over five shadowed steps inviting you in—
this is the enchanted land of echo and dust motes
that sheltered, like a silent Orphic chorus,
the fervent, fertile brain of William Morris.

Leslie Schultz

On our recent trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I bought a copy of their beautifully produced Handbook detailing highlights of their collections. This morning, I was idly leafing through it and became mesmerized by the photograph that inspired this poem. And I learned that this photograph, one of the very first of the museum’s now extensive holdings in photography, was the thin end of the wedge in winning “art” status for photography in Philadelphia.

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Even more intriguing, Arts and Crafts Movement luminary William Morris (painter, poet, textile designer, philosopher, socialist, publisher, an early establisher of the modern fantasy genre) rather disliked photography. Yet, he invited this photographer, Frederick H. Evans, to photograph his home and the home base for his publishing arm, Kelmscott Press. I have long been attracted to his personal motto: “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris (1834-1986) I have yet to live up to it. This photograph makes me wonder what my limestone basement, now brimming with this and that, would look like empty.

Kelmscott_Manor_News_from_Nowhere

(Images from Morris and Evans in the public domain.)

Until tomorrow!

Leslie

A Poem in Progress: #11–April 11, 2016

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Number 11

Uncaging the Bas

It’s a grey-again Sunday
after mere hours of honeyed sun,
two weeks of rain and wind,
three sudden squalls of snow.

Donning my long, grey coat,
taking up my shears,
I see what is emerging
and wish to help it grow.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
known at home as “Ba”,
had to escape her girlhood
in foggy London,

where she slept like
Sleeping Beauty,
to flower fully
in sun-kissed Italy.

You, tiny daffodils,
you bring her name each year
up from the winter snow,
and I must cut away

these dead stalks holding you
down, help you proclaim
openly, openly
your fragments of sun.

Leslie Schultz

Yesterday was the first day I have been able to be out in the garden. It has been very cool here, though the grass is green and the scilla are ahead of schedule. I could see that the little daffodils are almost ready to bloom but they were overshadowed by the dried walnut leaves and the stalks of last season’s cone flowers. So I spent a few moments uncovering them–and I am hoping hard they don’t get hit by new snow.

Ba One

Ba Two

If all goes well, they will bloom exuberantly, as in past years!

Ba Daffodil Six

Until tomorrow!

Leslie

Poem in Process: #10–April 10, 2016

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Number 10

Where I Live

My grandmother had a silver teapot.
It grew black inside and out,
So she had it dipped in a bubbling vat
Of chrome, from base to spout.

It never needed polish then
Or any special tender care,
And she could spend a lot more time
Combing and combing her brittling hair.

One cannot tend to everything.
I know I have to pick and choose
Among the things with shine I love
And those I’ll really use.

But magpie words! Those ones I hoard,
The ones I find and love the best,
I’ll use their gleam and chainmail strength
To weave a place to live: this nest.

Leslie Schultz

This kind of poetic structure, the simple ABCB quatrain, is the first form I used when I started writing poetry at age eight, although I believe that the first form I encountered was the couplet. Remember this?

“In an old house in Paris, that was covered in vines,
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.”

They are, of course, the immortal opening lines to Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans, 1939. I probably feel about them the way ancient Greeks felt about Homer’s opening lines in the Iliad. Instantly, their incantatory quality summons me to a different place, a hyper-real place of story, a realm where the littlest person is fearless, kind, strong, and brave.

Today I am thinking of the of how my life is built of words as much as out of material substances like molecules of air or water or food. I am also watching the intent activity of birds in our back garden–robins, wrens, crows, and swallows–as they seek material to build their nests, singing or scolding or advising the entire time.

Some words I am enchanted with at the moment, for no particular reason:
Scabbard
Starboard
Vellum
Pleached
Hornbeam
Vertiginous
Sump

I would enjoy knowing if you have any current favorite words at the moment–and, if so, do you simply savor them or do you find them useful?

Until tomorrow!

Leslie