the soul will out

UNICORN RISING

2012-01-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

UNICORN RISING

grazing on green violets in spring

we hear with gentle hearts

the soft sounds

of new music

from green gold reeds

as the sun warms a new Dayrose

on slender vines

strong enough to weave new clothes

for the Emperor

born from the breath of the Unicorn.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

CAMP CEDAR GLEN

2011-08-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

CAMP CEDAR GLEN

The children find me here on the rock—
four girls and one boy, they climb up,
and spread out their towels to sunbathe.
Jenny, April, Autumn, Holly, and Sean.
April says everyone else has gone to chapel.
I tell them Indians used to sit here…
that this is a sacred place.

O Great Rock, balanced here
between setting moon and rising sun,
tell me your name!

I am Grandfather Rock,
grandfather to modern poets too,
young bards who come to dream their dream
in the woods…you hear that jazzbird?
He’s tapping out the base pattern.
jazzbeat on wood
bird chorus swells up
bless you my children
I bequeath you my stone savings
base pattern bones earth bones
marrow of the mother Mother Marrow Mother Mary
Great Goddess come dance on the bones of our good mother
O mother love how can we dance on your bones?
Make us know that we are free
in the trees in the greening

Youngbird flutters joyous wings to waning moon
achieves air and sails into birdsong
turns on homing wind and calls, Jazzbird!
finds his throat liquid warbling riverhood
manheart splits through throatcry, Prometheus!
You old fire lover man lover,
earth water fire earth water fire,
you brought air too, didn’t you
Prometheus?

Wind blow gently on liquid heartfire,
Motherbones dance to the base pattern,
Jazzbird, God, blow gently on heartfire.

The children have left, having found and taken
what they needed from this place
quickly and surely as children do.
I am alone on the rock in the trees
in the blue circle of Time,
Grandfather Rock, Open Sky,
Golden Sun, Silver Moon, Myriad Birdcall.
I bow. I offer thanks, and promise to come here again.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

O HENRY’S LAST LEAF

2011-07-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

O HENRY’S LAST LEAF

In this classroom.
I wish to compete!
I wish to compete
with what is going on
out there!
Last night…
In color
and in black and white,
you watched
and you listened
as television reassembled
beatings and rapes and…
and murders.

This morning
I want to read to you
a simple story. O Henry,
O! teach us to listen.
Teach us to hear
this small quiet voice.

In this room
there are no guns.
There are no cries
of pain and horror
to snare your attention…
only this small quiet voice
that says, look,
there is this much good
…in one old man…
who is drunk…
most of the time.
(So the teacher said
one last leaf for O Henry)
And I believe…
the students…
Listened.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

TRANSFORMATION

2011-06-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

TRANSFORMATION

At birthing time

one is asked to be a bearer of life—

seeing beyond the shrouds

which cloud clear vision—

carrying seed and symbol

toward and toward…

the birth of the Dayrose

whose power knows

and distills golden fragrance

from mudsludge and dungeon breath—

rendering the pure essence

of all seeing

now then here being

now then here being…

made to live

as long as God lives.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

2011-06-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

Ultimately the voice in the whirlwind says
I am this love
which drips like honey through earthly caverns
…to the high altar…
poetry is the rich conserve—
the talisman for transit
through all comings and goings
moment to moment
aeon to aeon
music from the great organ
always othering to itself
but yet comes home.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

HIGH WITNESS

2011-05-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Meister Eckhart

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."

HIGH WITNESS

as we are camped out here

on this more often and indeed very darkling plain

Djwhal Khul tell us to be the high witness

we have our electronic campfire

we sit facing the television

we move through the ceremonies of Kennedy funerals

through the ceremonies upon the death of a princess

we bear high witness

we bear high witness to war after war

there is Desert Storm

the Towers fall

oil explodes in oceans

earthquakes come

tornadoes come

and then the fires

Netanyahu speaks to Congress

Obama speaks to Parliament

in 1939, a ten year old boy writes

of the terrible scar of war

and pleads for leaders to sit down together

sit down together and talk things out

work together

this scar is a terrible thing

these wars…

long deceased now,

that ten year old yet watches

still keeps watch for these children

we sit facing the screen

we watch and listen

all the world speaks now

cries out in pictures

the grandson of a Kenyan cook in the British Army

stands before the British Parliament

as President of the United States

and says “It will be years before

these revolutions will reach

their conclusions”…

and says, “We have a say in how this story ends.”

he quotes Churchill: “…wherever the bird of freedom

chirps in the human heart…”

there is the eye that sees

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

2011-04-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, is now seen as a good early copy of Bruegel's original.

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

I see too,
remembering Auden's Icarus,
that when it comes to suffering
they are seldom wrong
these reporters and their cameras,
the way they catch tragedy on the human face,
and yet sometimes they fix for us
in their instants and afterimages
...something achingly beautiful, incandescent...
so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.
I have kept it here on my desk,
for weeks now, have studied her expression...
hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,
perhaps clear only to her.
I have met those eyes, the lips
pursed to appeal from her side.
I know little of sides and battles,
but I know that face.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

Here is the poem which inspired me and my students:
MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS
By W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,
Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

Pasted from

Here is another poem...this one from DOORS INTO POETRY, by Chad Walsh (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962)...

THE FALL OF ICARUS (From Brueghel's painting)
by Charles F. Madden

The bulging sails by a riotous wind caught
pull the ships and their rigging nets toward shore
to be emptied. The sailors quickly will calm their floors
and their houses in the evening light will melt into the mountains.

And on the hill with one foot planted in the earth
his plowing almost done; his eyes cast down and fully shielded
from the sun which now is growing shadow, the farmer
turns in soil and toil the final circles of the day.

Below him a quiet pastoral: on lichen bearing rocks
the feeding sheep, the quiet watching dog, the silent shepherd
so stalking with his eyes the homing flights of birds
that neither he nor the intent fisherman closer to the shore,

none has seen the silent fall of Icarus
through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light,
nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight
of his remembrd waxed and winged flight.

--Charles F. Madden

ELIJAH'S CUP

2011-04-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

ELIJAH'S CUP

Dear ‘Elijah Rising’…I was just going to post this poem today, and as I come to the blog, I see your comment…so this is for you...what beautiful synchronicity! I wrote the poem several years ago as my night time reflection after being invited to a large Seder service at a temple. The Haggadah explained the fifth cup and how only the children in the room notice that indeed Elijah has come and sipped the wine. There was a small ‘post script’ which said it’s now okay to drink from that fifth cup during the service. I raised my glass with deliberate thought and real joy.
--bss

ELIJAH’S CUP

That fifth cup is Elijah’s cup.
Be reverent
with the shards
that remain
of that perfection
which was childness.
Turn them carefully
against your callouses,
or listen, as with a shell
to the ear, for secrets saved
toward wholeness.
All these years…
kept in the keep of the heart,
the secret stirs, and Elijah
begins again to whisper.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

FOR WORDSWORTH: DAFFODILS

2011-04-11T09:57:00.001-07:00

FOR WORDSWORTH: DAFFODILS

Through a long winter
my feet have traced a new path
through unpatterned shadows
from ice-laden limbs of bare trees.
Bare trees cannot shelter,
even sparrows,
yet they do offer themselves
as cold crystal prisms,
as pale sun warms the waiting
for some sound of spring. There!
Yellow chalice-faces,
green-stemmed hope,
daffodils breaking through—offering—
There!
--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE HEART

2011-02-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

THE HEART

Having inquired too much

of too many lessons and too many books

now I lay me down on this good earth

to mound the leaves like words--

piles and piles of yarrow words.

Silent and dark, I stir and stir

until the question bows,

until the question stirs.

Where does "I want" arise?

In the mind.

Where does "I need" arise?

In the body.

Where does "I have" arise?

In the heart.

The heart can never be cut down.

The heart can never be used up.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE BALANCE TURNS ON YES

2010-12-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

THE BALANCE TURNS ON YES

My soul is balancing out there
and the balance turns on yes...
a light burning through black and white,
press printing new patterns
(this is only flat paper news)
I look down from the horrors
of the Sunday paper
to this cat
(who has become my teacher of late)
here on my lap
(warm ease and somehow here being)
with balance here
with balance here seeming
on a thin thin wire
silver spun from some center...
is pure? will hold?
the center holds
(even to that mountain in the distance there)
Yes.

Trusting the morning hand
for some graceful knot,
I look up to bind...
up and out and level
(even to that distant mountain there)
and back to this flat paper news
whose power leaps quivering from points of pain
dangerously shaking the gossamer line.
Almost I hear the fearsome snap:
a heartpulse...and the line holds.
My soul comes comes home again
from rare space
and I stroke the cat
and we enjoy fragrant tea
with some serenity.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

DRAGONS FROM THE DEEP LOCH

2010-03-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

DRAGONS FROM THE DEEP LOCH

Up from the deep waters
The deep unconscious
The unreflected upon waters of the oceans
Which hold together this striving planet
Up and out in the open
From these deep waters
The old patriot rejection of old world parentals…
Are we afraid of old European ideologies which suckled
Throughout centuries...and aeons...? even learning all the while
to winnow out some poisons..
...An old-new idea
Is born and in Boston the tea boxes go into the sea
That sea of consciousness
(they sometimes call the marrow in our bones the sea of consciousness)
…that sea of consciousness which ultimately touches all shores on this planet.

“And what is the ocean doing?”

And like the unclean knives buried for centuries on the ocean floor,
The creations in the deep loch come up to walk our modern streets
And populate our screens…for better or worse…we must decide.
The old subterranean dragons in the edens of our ideas…
How to integrate them into our dimly dreamed benevolent humanity?

The patriot’s cry…”from my cold dead hands”…pry this weapon.
And the nation which says it’s “Christian” forgets that the man Jesus
Urged the giving up of weapons…even suggested they be made into
Plows for growing fields of food to feed the hungry.
So we have the rebirth of the tea party…
Rather than leaning shoulders to wheel to actually build
That more perfect union, that more perfect government
Which ultimately leads to the laying down of the weapon
Before we have to deal with that “cold dead hand”…

Fear? Well, bombs, swords…
Those who make them tend to reject
The idea of benevolent evolution for humankind.
Jesus said those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

Do not let us be that ever adolescent culture
Continually rebelling against motherfather countries
In order to discover the “new” identity within….
Let us put down the weapon
Before we are that cold dead hand…

Rather be the hand that signed a declaration of the benevolent
Future for humankind…that promised to be example…
A living walking example…into being.
We must not become that cold dead hand.
We create ourselves each day
According to our idea of ourselves.
Let us welcome the future with warm hands.

--Barbara Smith Stoff
March 24, 2010

AEONS AND SAGES

2010-03-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

AEONS AND SAGES

I can give you no children this time.
Yet I am pregnant with your love.
Our gift to life
is nurtured in warmth
of winter evenings and lamplit pages…
history distilled here in rooms
safe for a time of growing.
You read of brave visionaries
and watch modern day news…
and come to the question between.

Dimly we know, we two,
that in me your trust, so carefully tendered,
finds answer and soft shelter
as we walk through the days
of this our morningtime…
noontime…
eveningtime…
toward such bright birthing.

How far we can see…
through suns and moons
as the earth keeps turning
from love to love, aeons and sages:
As we are here to warm ourselves,
Again we eat our bread together.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

FACING WEST

2009-12-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

FACING WEST

Wild persimmons, red cardinals...
Heart aches for the beauty of the place
To stay and stir among the wintering roots
Tufting through to spring. To Spring? Oh.
The heart caves and whispers
Not, in such deep silence.
Eye watches autumn
Surely sifting summer seeding
For winter's cold keeping
And spring ever calling.
Already I long for spring...
Or fear white winter's dying...
What dies in winter?
Only the summer's dreaming.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

2009-12-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

In this classroom,
I wish to compete!
I wish to compete
with whatever
is going on out there!
Last night
in color
and in black and white,
you watched
and you listened
as television reassembled
beatings and rapes and...
and murders.

This morning
I want to read to you
a simple story. O Henry,
teach us to listen
O! teach us to hear
this small quiet voice.

In this room
there are no guns
there are no cries
of pain and horror
to snare your attention...
only this small quiet voice
that says, look,
there is this much good
...in one old man
who is drunk...
most of the time,
so the teacher said,
(one last leaf for O Henry)
and I believe...
the students...
listened.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

2009-12-24T08:48:00.000-08:00

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

Hard words from retreating faces
are cold fingers groping
spreading chill covering
over warm and pulsing life
unveiling self as monad,
an ultimate lonely unit
cooling and cooling into cold compression
falling toward frozen death below degree:
Dante's deepest center emits no light.

Energy is stilled
in cold pressure condensing
past the point of transformation,
isolation bursts from its own intensity
and cold becomes heat expanding
radial reaching, starburst giving
full circle reconciliation...
polar arcs in myriad hue.
Clear-eyed faces, behold!
Such transfiguration.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

SEA CHANGES

2009-11-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

SEA CHANGES

I
By the sea the wind
blowing from green white froth
onto a small cache
of live embers in sun warmed sand
whispers old secrets,
restoring old hopes.
So we come back to the sea
for a gift of vision
and we believe…
as the wind turns gray embers
into living fire.

II
And you,
I hold you with my hands
and I sit with you
on the windward shore
the wind carries our words
and twists them chocking
as we gasp for air
we turn and lean into the wind
and glaciers move…
the wind in us and around us
etches lines
forming our faces,
(we must have faces!)
and glaciers move…

III
Tonight there are only cold rocks
and dry brittle bones
upon this beach. The wind
spews out little child cries
and old men’s moans. I cradle
myself against this wind
which gives me no peace—
rises to a shriek, roars and mocks.
The roots are torn.
I crouch with my back to the wind
and feel in my bones
the pain of coming birth…
Will be, Is, is now, is born now
wailing and keening,
the roots…the roots…
Form draws itself up
and walks into the wild beauty,
knowing pain,
knowing the wind.

IV
Sandy beach…
little waves washing
washing pains past hurts
the woundtide recedes
and comes less often…
sunny sandy beach
solitude sun and warm sand
I am
I am warm here
I hear singing.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE SOUL TO KEEP

2009-11-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

THE SOUL TO KEEP

In a green glade
wherein the deepest pool,
I have carved a cedar box
and lined it well with pearl.
I have cast it all around
with silver fleur de lys
and made a latch from finest gold,
then laced it through with dream.
In it I have kept
the song of the meadowlark,
the call of the nightingale,
and crystal mirrored tears
from the breast of the mourning dove.
All the jewels of heaven
on tufts of velvet green...
the starflung wonder
of red satin summer,
the whisper of autumn leaves
in the splendid melon sun,
the silken petal saved
through silent sifting snow...
And the sweet chalice of spring.
Whoever shall find this store,
I have hidden the key
in the roots of the willow tree
that bends to trace the door.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

BURNING BUSH

2009-11-19T22:21:00.000-08:00

BURNING BUSH

Desert Hexagram...
fire over wish
prayer enkindled
from long thoughts in long valleys
and yea we walk through them
the heart falls dead before
moonset. If dawn, a promise:
mothwing...silver...ashpure.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THAT FIFTH CUP

2009-11-19T22:16:00.001-08:00

THAT FIFTH CUP

Be reverent
with the shards
that remain
of that perfection
which was childness.
Turn them carefully
against your callouses,
or listen, as with a shell
to the ear, for secrets saved
toward wholeness.
All these years...
kept in the keep of the heart,
the secret stirs, and Elijah
begins again to whisper.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

ORACLE

2009-11-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

ORACLE

Eye, shielded by twin mirrors,
sees anyway, great slabs tremble,
crack and crumble,
gold splintering on iron, hard rock
street rock blaring on glinting gore--
blind entrails spread out, surrendered.
Eye, having once known mercy,
call down blessing.
Machine, grind bone
for sifting in softer wind,
twentieth century afoot in great cities,
this hollowed shard cups the sky and waits.
Green Heart, go silent,
new rains drumming.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

ARIES

2009-11-19T22:05:00.001-08:00

ARIES

I am a wick
in the Godlamp
needing only
a gentle hand
and air.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

SILENCE

2009-11-19T22:03:00.000-08:00

SILENCE

Like pebbles in water
the words settle
through layers of selves
to deep center...
and silence...
then Self says:
Love is the ground of being.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

FOR WINTER

2009-11-19T22:00:00.000-08:00

FOR WINTER

September wind blows
toward the ripening melon,
cultured there in lush green shadows,
such golden globing rounding rounding
truth into beauty...
like a lantern beckoning
in the hand of the Hermit
lighting the path to Ithaca.
You have been gone long enough,
Young Bard of the Modern Altar.
Now is the time for returning.
It is now that winter lamps
will illumine the page
where the heart can write
the Fool's wisdom, as gift
for the coming age.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

ELEVEN NOVEMBER

2009-11-11T08:59:00.000-08:00

ELEVEN NOVEMBER

Oak limbs, bare and dark,
reach across clouds of red maples.
Below...yellow lilies
begin their blooming for another season.
Eleven Eleven...

--Barbara Smith Stoff

PERSEPHONE

2009-11-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

After the Great Fall,
it is that the warrior has danced upon the bones
of our dismembered illusions
Isis, come now.
Re-member us with new forms, new ideas.
Life must survive.
After the Grail seeking and the Persephone tasks,
tell us what can we envision together.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

TO A YOUNG POET

2009-10-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

For dragon’s teeth upon the altar
You are received
Into the great hall
Where the words of poets echo
And whisper from chamber to chamber,
Hang from the horn of a stag,
Ripple in the red pouring of wine…
They lie liquid upon the stone,
Gleam in the glance of a sword,
Hide in the curve of a gown,
And dance out into the green
Green dalliance of spring,
Stirring wild in the woods.
Let your words fall full golden
Into the body of the world,
Then tread Truthfully in the furrowed field
Until the song of the ruby in the marrow
Shall call even the stones from slumber.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

MORNING AGAIN

2009-10-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Rain today softly
the world is washed clean
today
a new light
waits in the mists there
in the distant trees
softly
lighting our gaze
toward All Dreaming.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

DOE TRAIL LANE

2009-10-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

Down in the meadow
the crack of the day
is marked at meeting
by the sound of shooting,
down at the end of Doe Trail Lane.

Counting Lane by Lane
cleanly laid out...
Pinto, Polo, Possum,
house by house to the lake,
tall thin saplings fling up
their fretwork and veining,
simply ending up there
in the grey flesh of heaven,
down at the end of Doe Trail Lane.

Down in the meadow
the crack of the day
is marked at meeting
by the sound of shooting,
down at then end of Doe Trail Lane.

Being warm inside this cabin
and knowing, that come dark,
I will be able to nestle myself
with blankets, and lay me down to sleep,
I look at the stars on the covering
my mama sewed for me...
and, hearing a shot,
I look through the window.
I ask for clean release
for the hunted; for the hunter,
down at the end of Doe Trail Lane.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

ALABASTER

2009-09-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

I am partial to spring and autumn
as I am to dawn and twilight
(that most fleeting chance
between curtains),
as I am partial to alabaster,
soft incandescence
blending soil and light,
earth longing for sky,
glowing like yellow roses
(awash in Rainlight).

LET US TALK OF MERLIN

2009-08-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

(though you have written poems for me)
I have been thinking for a few days now
my child, I have never written a poem for you,
but-my God! what worlds beyond words
I want to say to you!
How does one say such knowing
without stirring old fears
sprung from the deep
and disguised
in angry colored cloaks and dark cowls?
Awesome shapes towering over innocence
only two feet high, and crowned with sungold.

How can I convey to you some wisdom
for dealing with a world of fierce faces
and bony hands...the fat bellies which mock
and laugh when you are hungry? Mechanical
monsters which in their shiny surfaces
reflect back to you...only surfaces...

Wwhat consummate thievery!
There are monstrous and vacuous and false Merlins
who simply deconjure the human soul...
We are left to endure phantom pains and empty noise.

Then, there is the other world, which can be,
can be, only if we can learn to be, or bear to be,
Merlins ourselves and create forms which truly sing.
So how can you--slender little one--
balance on the fine line between,
allow the dual play, and still grow
with verve and grace and understanding?
Dare I believe that some new Merlin
works a final magic with love's alchemy,
transmuting base offerings, and...moment
by moment...fills the inward coffer?
For this you must find your own teacher,
and how then dare I help you choose?
(my heart suspends its beating here and listens)

--Barbara Smith Stoff

HEXAGRAM: PRAYER

2009-08-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Given the seasons,
we eat the yellow squash
of summer
and spit the seeds into warm soil
of autumn
New Moon Earth Mother
and keeper of all unsorted seeds,
Oh! protect the best of these
from the cutting knife,
reasoning beyond depth,
death, and all dark wisdom,
Keeper of curling green wands
lifting now to light.
Earth Egg Number Eleven.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

WELCOME HOME

2009-08-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

In this morning's garden
a most lavish butterfly
of velvet brown and corn yellow,
a messenger, perhaps
from your spirit winging ahead,
too eager for droning engines.
Now, here on the ground,
I feel that butterfly in my heart
fluttering to greet you--
what if the green hills and blue flowers
are not enough for such an event?
Across miles and miles of sky and field
laced with silver water ribbons...
Ah! the world comes on butterfly wings!
Grand daughter, how wonderful you are.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

DAFFODILS

2009-08-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

DAFFODILS

Through long winters
my feet have traced a new path
through unpatterned shadows
from ice-laden limbs of bare trees.
Bare trees cannot shelter
...even sparrows...
yet they do offer themselves
as cold crystal prisms
as pale sun warms the waiting
for some sound of spring.
There! Yellow chalice-faces,
green-stemmed hope--
daffodils breaking through--
offering--There!

--Barbara Smith Stoff
(written many years ago as I sat in a library
reading Wordsworth's poem)

INNER CITY WINDOW

2009-08-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Old woman, forgive me for watching you
from this high hotel window facing north
(through historic palms growing
straight up out of concrete--
it takes a long time to grow that tall) I see
early mornings you come out to hang up the wash,
white and pink sheets, red shirts, dark socks,
a little girl's dress...I notice you limp a little,
and I imagine the joints are large, as your fingers
work with old weathered wood of clothes pins.
I see your son come out each morning too,
he waters the corn growing at the back of the yard,
a little green garden, secret behind high brick walls...
the corn has sprung out tassels this week.

I take my briefcase and hit the road
on behalf of the State Board of Education,
and come back to the window late in the day.
Sun and wind slant into the palms
and on to the green plants in your kitchen window,
birds settle in for the night, a whole chittering colony,
invisible under the laurel leaves...
Your son comes out to check his corn and feed his dog
beside a child's red wagon...the washing is gone now,
gone on to whoever needs fresh clothes for tomorrow.
I look (do you feel my intrusion?) as I pick up my pen
to write, and I wonder which among us has found wisdom.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

August

2009-08-04T08:22:00.001-07:00

The morning glory has gained
the very tip of the pine tree
and I contemplate a perfect stairway
of green hearts lying full open
in the sun's exuberance,
transmuting to royal magenta
the summer's joy in fullness.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

The Sunday Times Museum of Fine Art

2009-08-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

I see too,
remembering Auden's Icarus,
that when it comes to suffering
they are seldom wrong
these reporters and their cameras,
the way they catch tragedy on the human face,
and yet sometimes they fix for us
in their instants and afterimages
...something achingly beautiful, incandescent...
so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.
I have kept it here on my desk,
for weeks now, have studied her expression...
hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,
perhaps clear only to her.
I have met those eyes, the lips
pursed to appeal from her side.
I know little of sides and batles,
but I know that face.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

2009-06-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

For Misha on her birthday.

BEE AND LAVENDER

Waking from sleep
twice of late
I have felt your presence
announced by fragrance
of bee and lavender
which you made for me.
Even though that small jar is closed and in the drawer--
I know it's you
come to visit me
while you sleep no doubt
your spirit finds free to waft toward
and toward--your grandmother--
as in the old days when you were three and snuggled so happily
onto my very pillow--
Such a good presence you are still--forever.

(c)-- Barbara Smith Stoff

2009-06-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Again, I begin with a thought from ...William Stafford's poem "An Introduction to Literature"...

...so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share....