ISABEL CHENOT has loved, memorised, and practised poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books
Great Lake
As though we’d slipped through to a hidden room,
we walked without our usual thoughts.
Our fear was dying.
A tree swept upward, an abandoned broom
raking the quiet. Intermittently, it rained white
birds – of whom, not one was crying.
Dead fear can be exhumed,
but what can rob us of that
blue bar lying
on its steel grey tomb –
or of the slippered light
on the sole sound of water flying?
dawn, Manitowoc
Lake birds are rowing out and turning
their long canoe of flight,
perfecting air’s geometry of yearning
with curves of white.
Hover and dip and swivel, gullwing,
ternwing;
pelican, drip light.
Skim, heron. Oars of morning
on lakes of sight.
The weeds were wrapped around my head
-Jonah 2:5
The light exists along the edges
of the roads we took.
A few weeds grip the dirt
and hold
like weeds (we’re told)
around a whale-shocked
prophet’s head. Unlikely plot
of an old book.
On scraggle hedges
where uncommon rains erode
the desert
light exists.
And when I close
my eyes
gnarled, ragged roots of stars
milk filaments of moon
hard scimitars
on seeds
of sun
and sparks
of finespun
nebula
clutch havocked
thought
like weeds clutched Jonah.
When I close my eyes
a few weeds by a desert road
clutch light.
Some buried reason’s lode
of sight
in the foreswallowed
dark.
ISABEL CHENOT has loved, memorised, and practised poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood