DOLDRUMS

What a self-explanatory word is "doldrums"!  It sounds like what it is, the first syllable's long mournful O sliding into the backwater liquid of L.  And then those drums, the shudder vowel of the "uh", the lid shoved down on it by the M.  And for good measure the sibilant S closing out this enervating sound of a word.  This enervating time, this summer lethargy I've been in for weeks now.

Arjun, now deceased, in a doldrums mood.  

No blogging.  Just a few poems begun, which is better than none, of course.  Much better.  One of them, tentatively titled "The Vishnu Bird" opens with a little song of promise.

The Vishnu bird startles me

this morning.  Vishnu

vishnu, he calls from the  tree

the locals call sarvis

because it blooms Eastertime,

 calling the faithful to worship. 

Barefooted, I'm walking out to the garden

in nightgown and bathrobe,

my coffee cup half full,

my head brimming over with another night's

bird calls. 

How Vishnu, in his incarnation as bird, got into my back yard, who knows.  Maybe he'll bring along some different rhythms and images.

Not even the garden has energized me as much this summer, though, Vishnu notwithstanding,  when I walk out barefooted with coffee cup in hand.  Our lettuces have been battered by rain and hail, our mustard greens gone to seed too early.  No tomatoes at all.

Still, the edges of a few leaves are beginning to turn russet.  The wind teases the hair on my arms.  Something's coming, some change of cloud-drift, some shifting of the imagination's tectonic plates. Maybe.  And though there are no tomatoes,  there are cucumbers, and more cucumbers.  What does that word sound like, cucumber?

 I leave it to you to tell me.

POET OF THE DAY: Diana Pinckney

My friend Diana has a gorgeous new book out from Lorimer Press, located in Davidson, NC. If you are looking for some poetry to help you celebrate the greening up of our April world, this is it. Today is "Greening Up the Mountains," here in western North Carolina, so I have green, verde, vert on my mind!

Diana Pinckney is the award-winning author of three previous books of poetry. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including Atlanta Review, Calyx, Cave Wall, Green Mountains Review, Kalliope, RHINO, Tar River Poetry. She is the 2010 winner of the Ekphrasis prize.

A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Pinckney has been a featured reader in the Sundown Series for the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival, The Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series, the Sensoria Literary Festival and the Charleston Public Library Literary Series. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina where she teaches poetry at the Cornwell Center.

THE MERMAID WONDERS
WHERE HER DAUGHTER GOES


Tall on this rock, she gives
me a See ya and dives

for longer and longer swims,
leaving me to wonder whose sails

spread before or under her
on those hard slick boats she loves.

Whose sand oozes
between her toes, sticks to her legs

after a throw-down with beach bums.

Total party hounds, she sneers

when I ask. Gives me an O.K. sure
or worse, a None’ ya biz when I warn.

Besides me, who waits for those white
arms rolling in the foam of midnight,

those bright streamers of hair tangled
with moonlight, lifted by a tide

that measures my days, that returns
each night, refusing to give up my daughter.



THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER WONDERS
WHO HER MOTHER IS


I floated by in a basket?
Like wood storks bring babies out
of the marsh. Oh, please.
So she sang and played her flute,
combed my hair with coral and, whoa,
gave me manatee’s milk meant
for those fat pups
under mangrove roots, wrapped me
in greasy sealskins, yuck,
fed me fish roe – no way this was caviar –
tern eggs. Whatever.

Like how
did I end up with her?
Maybe some beach beauty
does a total meltdown at two a.m.,
can’t take the crying.
Who knows. Hello? No one
drops her baby in a grass basket –
wouldn’t that leak -- then shoves it out to sea.
Mothers don’t do that.
Do they?