Works of Poetry

Carolyn Maddux

O gracious light, pure brightness of the ending day and the sky lambent
over the long waters, sky lighting the reservoir
reflecting setting sun the color of coreopsis
brightness of the everlasting Father
who created ponds to reflect these pines
in silent pools, to distill green light like mirrors,
to reflect coreopsis and black-eyed Susan
now as we come to the setting of the sun
behind sassafras’ trinitarian leaves
behind hills of wagging oak and sweet-gum
below sky bending over long green waters
our eyes see the vesper light
ranging down Mount Barnwell, sliding
behind the pines, behind oaks, behind still waters
and red clay hills, where unseen blackbirds sing
as we sing your praises, O Father
cicadas praise, trilling, air vibrating like wires,
mockingbirds singing into the breathy dark
wide leaves and light wind responding
you are worthy at all times to be praised
by the quiet breathing of sweet-gum leaves, by
shrill nightly cicadas, by yellow setting sun, by
warblers and scissor-tailed flycatchers calling into
the dark
praised by happy voices, O giver of life,
of slow rivers and setting suns, of green dragonflies
and the piney woods where they dip and dart,
of late blackbirds and gray mockingbirds singing
be glorified through all the worlds
at moist-breathed evening, hummingbirds whirring
through the dusk, cicadas singing into the night,
all spinning into the stars like spangled moths.

Gilmont, Upshur County, Texas

Alaska Quarterly Review V. 16, No. 3-4, Spring 1998

The sidewalk, the town: background-gray.
Awning: green-and-white.
Tables and chairs: dark green.

single bell counts hours from somewhere
in the church spire: un, deux, trois.
The level sky considers rain. Weak sun

glints off a black Triumph motorcycle
at the kerb, gleaming chrome. Coffee is ordered.
The waiter swipes at the counter
(black, marbled) with a white bar-towel.

Black hairs curl gently over the back
of his thin hand. We seat ourselves
at one of the green tables. Eventually

the languid waiter arrives with black coffee
in squat white cups, white-wrapped sugar cubes
on the sides. House-sparrows on the street

chirp brown and gray tunes from a quavering
harmonium. An old man in tweeds
at the next table drinks clear soda from a broad,
stemmed glass. When a red Fiat speeds by,

its driver honking the horn for all the world
like the master of the hunt, we nod
in unison and wave as if we knew him.

It is just the color the picture needed.

Eddythe as Seraph
By Carolyn Maddux

Early mass, and we have not yet grappled
with your leaving. Unaccustomed still
to missing you, we hardly can expect
to recognize in this seraphic sudden
visitor your sidewise smile. And yet
there comes that wise shared-secret twitch
of lips amongst the lambent smoke that swirls
and plumes like incense there between us
and the altar. Mother of the neighborhood,
I know you will forgive the first impression
dawning in my not-yet-quite-awake
perception: how a neighbor’s face appeared
at his back gate, all wreathed in reeking
pot-smoke when we passed last night.
Now smoke and feathers hide your laughing
eyes. They brush across your face, and we
recall the scent of myrrh, or frankincense,
or pitch of cedrus Lebani, or autumn leaves.
We note the little forward hunch
of wings; on feet not quite erased by wings
we see gold-corded slingback shoes.
What spirit wears your old conspiratorial
grin to come intruding here at Michaelmas
– as harvester or messenger? You shrug.
The glowing coals you bear in your
cupped hands flare up. We watch the flames
divide themselves, as prisms take the light,
into the carmines and the golds and blues
of bright stained glass, until the windows
and the autumn morning and the flickering
candles at the altar take them in. You circle,
rising, with a host of angels, mute as breath
among the beams: What war, what peace
is this? The smoke of risen incense thins away.
The air, unclouded now, still wears that smile.

Everything that blooms reminds me
of a place I left behind. I surround myself
with symbols of an unreachable content: the calm
everyday unfolding of daylily, tigridia, morning glory;
the wanton spreading of corrugated poppy petals
to catch the early sun; opulent fragrance
of old roses; amplitude of asters in September.

In every season I am minion to the binding earth.
I pull sour dock, quackgrass, cress, as first leaves emerge,
track the roots of Canadian bluebell, search out bindweed
and moonvine. I spread manure. I prune, water, cut back,
tie up, train, espalier, graft, shape limbs, supporting here,
denuding there as if there were something to uncover.
When the bitter odor of chrysanthemum turns the mind
to thoughts of winter, I plant bulbs, reassuring
myself that the earth will go on turning, that green
will emerge one more time, that snowdrop, aconite,
anemone, daffodil will push their way from earth
into the light. What dies back I take for compost.

come floating across the gray of a cold sky
like ashes from a chimney fire

lit by early-changing leaves.
Each year, we say, there are more crows.

grating against the smooth curling
of water on driftlogs, rounded stones.

The restless water of the Sound reflects
their flight, silvered waves tarnished

with mirror-specks. The crows drift, dark motes
moving across the evening-filtered light.