These two poems by Lynn Finger explore not only how humans experience the organic world around them, but how the organic expanse experiences humankind simultaneously…
by: Lynn Finger ((Header art by Stan Masters.))
Fragile Lanterns
Sunset. The copper petals split into shadow, lidless yolk.
Sun fades, yoked to night. Whose sight can tell the
beginning of anything? In the silt of salt stars, the
grasshoppers rarely sing. Who am I to guess at
the strange fragile ellipsis you brought here without
invitation, no starting point. Just arrival. When
did you decide that the long deep cobalt blanket
of evening is yours to keep. Start with that:
there is no home here between us, especially nothing
without a place, but even this is a space. Our hands
reach, make connection. Too long we thought we knew,
sweet & tart as the sun lost in a pocket of our own making,
no up or down. We did not decide at that moment
what was beautiful, or vital, or worth longing. We,
like time, don’t seek. We are singular as a thistle bone,
we travel as still as a darkened eye. Our wings,
copper petals, are our fragile lanterns.
Let all glances be what they should
be, smooth eyes of bird stones
multi-agate kindness,
there’s always a far field
somewhere in the distance
where a hawk soars.
It is your stamp of being.
We walk the streets, not lost,
but we always knew the field was
memory. Memory to catapult
you forward,
otherwise what’s the purpose,
a broken key chain.
Sometimes it
follows beside you,
strays from that broad
road of nothing.
You can never prove it,
it just is. And in this
grey of what happened,
all striving drops,
you cannot
expect more.
Lynn Finger’s poetry has appeared in Night Music Journal, Ekphrastic Review, MineralLitMag, 8Poems, Perhappened, and is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys. Lynn is an editor at Harpy Hybrid Review and works with a group that mentors writers in prison. Follow Lynn at @sweetfirefly2.
I’ve read these several times and I’m still groping to understand them. “Our wings, copper petals, are our fragile lanterns.” What does that mean? Does it have to mean anything? There’s an elegance to the lines, their rhythms. There’s an elegiac quality to the poems. They exude beauty, and that is sufficient. I’ll keep at them; perhaps my understanding will grow. Sometimes the poem is for the poet who writes them. Sometimes for a putative audience. Or both. It’s hard to tell. The poems are growing on me.
I like commenting here. The writers deserve feedback.
I know I’m full of it. I’m still having my coffee.
I’m looking for a copy of Ekphrastic Review.