April 7, 2020 Poem “Geranium Lake”



Geranium Lake
 
...all the colours that Impressionism has made
 fashionable are unstable, all the more reason
boldly to use them too raw, time will only
soften them too much…
Vincent Van Gogh in a letter
 to his brother, Theo)
 
 
Who knew that paintings fade
like flowers?
 
Van Gogh foresaw the unstable
quality of his pigments,
 
impressed them vividly
onto prepared canvas
 
as in this picture of a man
walking with a woman,
 
arms entwined, air
heavy as blue metal,
 
trees spaced like columns
in a Doric temple, where
 
undergrowth thick
and wavy as seaweed
 
blooms with color—
yellow, orange, white—
 
but that fugitive one,
called spark or geranium lake,
 
sent from far afield
by Theo, used to make
 
a brief flowering of pink
has faded to white;
 
quite the opposite
of the trillium
 
at the base of my elm
which emerges like snow
 
but then blushes
each season into oblivion
 
shaded by showy
day lily, shrouded
 
afresh in the mystery
of understory:
 
this the story,
the way of man,
 
of woman,
of all flesh.
 
 
Leslie Schultz

Image: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, b.1853, d.1890); Undergrowth with Two Figures; 1890; oil on canvas; Bequest of Mary E. Johnston; 1967.1430. (Cincinnati Museum of Art)

April 6, 2020 Poem “Fever”

 

 
Fever
 
A child asked me, “What is the grass?” fetching it to me with full hands…
                        (Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself, 6”)
 
 
Fever took me by surprise.
I was eight years old.
I lay in my room, under a blanket
covered with pictures
of pink roses, and the room
began to whirl. I could not
understand it, found it curiouser
and curiouser. The ceiling
tilted and dropped. The centrifugal
force created, somehow, by my own
body felt as though it would fling
me out of it, as though I had become
a spinning galaxy of heat and light
and pictures and roses that made
a body unneeded. I was puzzled
but not alarmed. I was on fire
with fire that did not consume.
 
My mother brought in the glass
thermometer, held in under
my tongue, kept bringing in trays
with ginger ale and aspirin, water,
sugary puddings after the sun rose.
When the sun fell, my fever broke.
I was still here but changed.
I could hear the pink Queen Elizabeth
roses growing on the other side
of the wall, hear the pellucid slugs
chewing the light green grass, even
the music of starlight streaming
through the willow tree I once fell
from, when the wind was knocked out
of me. Where did it go? I wanted
to know. I felt then that whole universe
unfurled from my home. Soon after
that fever I wrote my first poem.
 
 
Leslie Schultz

April 5, 2020 Poem “Ecola”

Cannon Beach, Oregon, January 1999 (Photo: Leslie Schultz)
 

Ecola
     for our daughter, on the other coast
 
 
Where is the entry point
into this poem?
The trail head is closed
for the foreseeable
which seems not that far, now,
our human future
shrouded in fog.
 
Fog remains at home, here,
on this point where land
meets sea, where a crescent
of beach curves. Just north,
Tillamook lighthouse still
battens to its rock,
abandoned columbarium;
 
just south, Haystack Rock
looms picturesque, mute.
I recall our last visit,
four months pregnant with you.
We rented a damp cabin
at Cannon Beach, dim
and stinking of old smoke.
 
That night, the roar of the surf
called us out. We walked
into the heavy fog, lights
of heaven concealed, even
the lights of the town, rocks,
docks, Sitka spruce all shrouded.
 
Delicate as deer, we went,
step by step, onto the wet sand,
its shining all we could see
except each other. The tide
was low but we knew
it would turn, that morning
would come. That fog would burn.
 
 
Leslie Schultz
Minnesota North Shore, July 2017 (Photo: Leslie Schultz)
Ecola State Park, Oregon from Lookout Point (Photo: Hellmann, courtesy of Pixabay)

April 4, 2020 Poem “Dogwoods”

Dogwoods
     for Judy
 
 
They are no dream. They are a dream come true.
These twigs, so red against the April snow,
nestle with pussy willows soft and grey.
These two embody harmony on a day
enflamed by public fear and private woe.
Their gentle forms uplift and bring to view
 
the memory of a friend who came to dine
just last month, who knocked when twilight fell,
who carried in these wands of wood and willow
cradled in her arm, tied up in yellow
paper, newsprint, yellow ribbon. I could tell
they came from her garden, at a time when mine
 
was frozen, mud-brown, glyph of brittle grief.
I exclaimed, then set them in a square vase,
four-sided, like the creamy bracts that frame
each cluster of tiny golden blooms, too tame,
I think, to call a flower. In any case,
that night, the slender red was not in leaf
 
but formed a backdrop for the silver show
of fuzzy nubbins shaped like kitten paws.
Today—Ta-da!—a dazzle of bright green
crowns every dogwood twig like a young queen—
Persephone, perhaps, who scorns applause,
yet yearly melts my heart, as well as snow.
 
 
Leslie Schultz

Today’s poem sprang from a recent gift, as you see. My friend, Judy, also keeps sled dogs, which had not occurred to me until just now, making the gift of dogwood all the more appropriate. Looking at these images, I am glad that the vase was made by a local artist, the late Charles Halling. I plan to plant these magic wands–pussy willow and dogwood–in my own garden when the time is right, after last night’s snow is no longer even a memory.

April 3, 2020 Poem “Cuz”


Cuz
 
 
Mom probably knows a lot,
counsels listening, helping,
staying in tune.
 
Cuz science is as real
as your feelings or mine,
and like us evolving.
 
Cuz the little bit
we choose to do
adds up exponentially.
 
Cuz we don’t always know
the cause or the cure
for sure, but we know
 
this splendid day
is a chance to be careful
and kind,
 
to steady the mind,
to smile. To get a clue.
 
 
Leslie Schultz
Soap Heart
Bees on Boots
Teddy Waving
Love Everywhere