Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781952617362 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rustik Haws LLC |
| Publication date: | 04/28/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 73 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
These Stunted Jersey Pines
By Norma Paul
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2013 Norma PaulAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-9653-3
CHAPTER 1
A Cold Morning
for September
The day began before the sky paled—a
cold morning for September.
Stars stood waiting for light
to obliterate their presence.
Distant planes droned among them
a reminder that life sings
above these stunted Jersey pines.
The quiet morning held
comforting moments of
close-quartered rhythm
established eons ago
during intermission.
Dancing together was never as
free-flowing, as breath-taking
as those early tentative steps
around our buzz of conversation.
This morning—each morning—began
again with that astonishing recognition.
Daily Paper
We always had the local newspaper
in our house when
I was a kid.
I'd be sent to the corner to pick up
the Buffalo Evening News—Blue Star
edition—three cents.
I'd read the headlines
walking back. I felt
a child of privilege in spite of
cardboard insoles
my father had shaped into
my year-old black oxfords
while he was home in between
his ship's drydock and the next call for
a digging crew for the WPA.
Reading drew us close to Wrong-Way
Corrigan and Wendell Wilkie,
Joe Louis, the Lindbergh baby,
Roller Derby queens, the Bisons,
Wallis Simpson. We marveled
that a mother had named her baby girl
other than Mary or Joan way back then,
linking fame from then on
with exclusiveness.
Homeschooled
I learned the Blues from my mother.
I mean Mama taught me the Blues
Taught me the meaning of the Blues—the wailing
Yes the Blues wail. They moan.
My mother moaned.
Her silent choking cacophony
Wailed down her cold-creamed cheeks
I pretended I didn't see
She pretended too.
We dropped no words into the
Deep gulf between us.
Radio waves blew Bessie's mournful melancholy
through me.
Motionless I held my arms at my sides
Listening to Bessie
Fingering her words up the scale and
Down again
Throbbing her words through her throat in
Mounting sibilance.
Sliding them between her
Compressed lips
Silk through satin.
All Through My Young
Childhood
All through my young childhood,
after hearing that guardian angels
watch over children to protect them,
I wondered with an edge of bitterness
where my very own guardian angel could be,
sure she was not protecting me.
Unprotected, I thought I was not good enough
maybe not child enough at the age of eight
to deserve such an angel—
old enough now to take care of myself.
Or was my angel in charge
of other children too,
other needier children,
so could not fit me into her
daily allotted time for such chores.
To take care of myself,
I would repent of that day's evil,
determine to start over again the next morning.
The next morning would find such resolutions
sorely tested, then abandoned to the
"never mind" philosophy
such a child learns to develop.
After many such lessons dearly learned,
one startling day that negligent guardian
hissed in my ear, "What are you waiting for?
Come On! Get out of here!"
Day-Lily
A world unreeled before her eyes when
first they lighted on your slow brown study.
Did you size her up as easy conquest as
your hands bid the day-lily open to the sun
only to mock in withdrawal of warmth and
shining with the turning of your back?
She stands motionless. Her head does not droop.
Her roots plunge deep.
Day-lily! Thrust your stamen high!
When one day you turn again
whose world then will be unreeled?
For is not the sun diluted
as the day winds down to the west?
A Man Who Moves Me
There is a thoughtful man who moves me,
Moves my mind to pursue thought.
No longer content to let words drift in and out of
Consciousness in familiar flowing channel,
I cut across to his island of Questioning.
There is a passionate man who moves me.
He moves passions early dampened by a
Stream of disdain for inept innocence.
Now Passion flares into bloom with the
Surge of Indian Summer,
Thrust hot through the center of my being.
There is a man who sweetly woos me without intent.
Lips part to savor dew held in afternoon roses
In care to crush not this fleeting bouquet.
There is a gentle man who moves me
Without stirring, without touching.
He will not be stirred by my touch
Although I melt by his.
My touch merely tickles his tolerant godly humor.
He kindly kisses my nose.
It's absurd to die from a kiss on the nose.
There is a man who moves me—to die.
Bohemian Child
Listen ponder be still
Listen listen ponder be still
—Eight o'clock bedtime Now I lay me down to sleep
Dark winter Light summer
Still dark summer morning Pray the Lord my soul to keep
Empty bed
She drags a string along the ground lifts it into the air
Calico kitten jumps and paws until they appear
Shivering in pre-dawn damp, their voices shaking
Scold the girl back back from white blooming cherry tree
Back from delicious May morning back into their cocoon of
dismal space raw floorboards laid on packed earth
Mayflies swarming in the fetid air.
If I should die before I wake—
Pray the Lord my soul to take—
Back into narrow white wrought iron bed.
Wait for suspicion of dawn.
Flecks of Fools' Gold
Heading for St. Louis, travelers pulsing east
race down Route Forty-four. Brick sentinels at
Webster Grove guard against incursion into
insular lives of Midwestern piety.
Behind one forbidding façade
restive brown eyes scan the ceaseless flow.
Trembling, chill, one lone driver feels the
piercing raw desire which penetrates
Missouri's petrified red clay
compels a hard right turn on the wheel.
Motor idling, the seductive lure to
return to the fevered game churns.
Summer detours sing idyllic. But time is
lost. So much time is lost.
In summer's mist a writhing silver-green stream
turns up a stone to catch the light in
flecks of fools' gold.
Let summer lie. Release the oak's brown leaves to
crackle and fly down Forty-four to
ferment in another town. Webster Grove:
Sleep tonight. The traveler must hurry home.
A Wandering Voice
A wandering voice
breezes by her ear.
Whispers of future beginnings
slide into sudden awareness,
then dangle there while she endeavors
to wrap her mind around dark riddles.
Sibyl, Sibyl, Sibyl streams like silver ribbons
across the labyrinth of ages.
When Alexander consulted Lamia's daughter
for legitimacy, she blessed his rise in Egypt.
Sambethe, Noah's girl, lies in Fresco
in the Sistine Chapel.
Now summer zephyrs stir an eager search,
a quest for answers to this puzzle of disturbance.
As the Sibyl of the Oracle raved her
prophecy at Delphi of Divine birth,
Michelangelo painted her image.
Raphael depicted angels as they
rendered their instructions
to sister Sibyls. Now it's but an Earth Mother of
lowly estate who is baffled by their predictions.
She inclines her head to allow mystifying words
full rein. Something there is that strikes a spark
on long-stifled embers.
With innate deliberation,
a dispelling breath,
that spark becomes one
with morning mist.
Its vapors curl along the dew of dawn,
search out receptive souls,
wandering, ever wandering.
A Memory
A memory of a dream—
no it's a prediction—
invades my mind as I turn to
leave the computer where I've labored
two hours since lunch in study—
reading real poets.
Through the window, spring birds fly back and forth
across the yard.
Down the street a large maple's top branches fan the air.
Purple flags line the other side of the
chain-link fence. I stare as each spot demands my attention—
try to recall that prediction. Will I learn the answer to it all?
Startling thick clouds—grey—pale—
hang low overhead. I long to plunge into them with
both arms up to my elbows.
There's a mystery to solve. I must dig.
Foolish nonsense—to dig into formless shapes for
answers to questions I cannot phrase. There's
a matter of some consequence I must
wrap my mind around to pass on a bit of intelligence.
Frustrated, I leave it all lying there
open-ended.
Beyond The Silence
Numbness begs at the rim of fire
that crackles at my core—
a dog panting to pounce on the roasted piece
materialized in chill silence.
Steadily it advances.
This is dying—surely—then
give me a reason to die.
Give me one word beyond the silence to
smother now smoldering coals.
Throw the dog his piece.
Dawning
I woke up warm and easy
Remembering music, a muted piano,
Fragments of conversation.
He has charm, that's what it is.
Was the voice my mother's?
You've always given in to charm.
Just remember what happened to the prizes
You won as a child.
Someone always got the best of you.
You'd end up with nothing.
I knew I had won.
I wish I could remember more of the dream.
It was his face, I was warm and
So outside myself, not touching anything.
The man has charm, that's all.
That music's still in my head.
The prize was mine to give, I won it, after all.
I still feel sleep-warm, and easy.
Or was the voice my own?
Down Water Street
beyond telephone wires on the other side
haphazard trumpet vines scramble to the tops of oak and maple
from sprawled out shrubs spread thirty feet across
mimicking an orange grove here in South Jersey.
Waxy white and purple spikes of orchid
reach toward them from their tan clay pots
here on my polished pine windowsill.
Nearly four this August afternoon, it's cooler now than it's been
since dawn, closing down the day a bit early. A few tired
geese
honk their way west across the sky just this side of
heavy puffs of cloud pulling down one lonely patch of blue.
I stand in the doorway to watch their strain against the tide of the
west wind as they beat their way toward freshness of an
inland lake.
Memory pictures endless flights of their long gone ancestral
family
traveling this way how many Augusts ago? Fewer and fewer
wing by
these days while my family grows wider each generation.
Today's children don't go to the door or out the door to watch
their passage. How can I tell them they must not miss it?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from These Stunted Jersey Pines by Norma Paul. Copyright © 2013 Norma Paul. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.