Marjorie Rommel

USA

mrommel@qwest.net

THE ORANGE

The rabbi refuses tea from my Belgian grandmother's cup,
accepts instead into his narrow, long-fingered hand
a perfect miniature sun. It glows in the room's dim light.

He passes it between his nose and his dusty beard, breathes in
the fragrance as if it were a fine cigar. He closes his eyes, says,
"Next year in Jerusalem." I wonder if he believes this,

yet I can see with his tender eye what he imagines: the desert
blossoming with orange trees; Ezekiel's wheel going down in flames
behind the walled city his people have never quite possessed.

At the exact angle prescribed by the Law which tells him whose cups
he may drink from, what fruits he may peel, the precise distance
the door to the street must be left open while he speaks with a woman

he must not touch even to say goodbye, he plunges the black-rimmed
nail of his opposing thumb into the bright surface, sends galaxies
of citrus oil -- each molecule a sun -- spraying out

in a pungeant mist. It hovers in the cool air of my all-too-sanguine
house
like the dizzying white perfume of the night-blooming cereus.
"God is good," he observes, as if surprised each time.

He licks the juice running toward the black cuff of his ancient,
ill-fitting coat,
then begins the long peel he is sure will reveal to him all mysteries,
God's immutable Law, source of all sweetness not segmented, but whole.

© 1989 Northwest Renaissance, Poets at the Kent Canterbury Faire

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score & ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, & back again.

It's dark out here, & cold.

Nobody said it would be so cold.
The lights of home seem far off & lonely
as star creatures pausing in their great dance,

like fireflies near the back porch,
winking off, on again, sending the galaxies
south or north, whatever the season --

or the candles you set in the window
each winter night, calling me home.
They made me feel so small.

You were a flame pure & steadfast.
"It isn't time to come in yet,"
I always said. Now I'm out, can't get in

& it's cold, so cold, Mother!
I hear you inside my room singing a song
so long & high it hurts ? a song

I've never heard before. Please
open the door! Give me one last kiss
to guide my way all those dark miles,

all those three score & ten million
light years to Babylon.

Ghost in the Garden (Godzillah Gospel Press 1995)

Ah, sunflower! Weary of time!
That countest the days of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet, golden clime
Where the traveler's journey is done.

Ah, youth, pine away with desire,
Ye pale virgins, melt like snow;
Arise from thy beds and aspire
Where my sunflower longeth to go!

-- William Butler Yeats

SUNFLOWER

Summer nights too hot for sleep,
my grandparents moved their old brass bed

to the orchard: moved the creaking, rustling
rope-supported tick fresh-stuffed with hay,

the lace-edged sheets, pieced counterpane,
embroidered pillow cases -- all.

Some scene from Wonderland, it seemed,
that gleaming bed among high grass,

the gnarled and lichened trunks hands filled
with ripening apples; stranger still to see

my little red-haired Grandma in her lisle gown
climb in to sleep beside old Grandpa in his nightshirt,

snoring fit to beat the band -- fit sure to raise
a little wind among white oatflowers willowing in

moonlight apple trees bowed down to offer
faery fruit as silver as the pale, cold star that

sailed above them -- almost, you could reach
to touch it -- cool and remote as an ancient glacier.

By day, the white sheets, embroidered cases,
flapped in sun along the pole-propped lines,

and, ironing, Grandma sang how little children
just like me were jewels in someone's crown.

By day, my Grandpa's sturdy boots strode back and forth
between the barns, his huge hands full of apples,

grafting knife, or hoe, or baby chicks, or some child's need:
"As tha bend it, so 'twill grow," he said, and so it was.

Along the fence, together, every spring, they planted
sunflowers; and when, in time, the brassy petals

opened, raised hosannas at each rise and set of sun,
they watched together, weary, peaceful, sharing some old fire.

And even near their journey's end, each summer
she remembered melting snow; and he, desire.

THE UNMADE BED
(After a black and white photograph by Imogen Cunningham)
-- for Nora

We see, through the discerning lens, this stark
black and white moment: loosed hairpin, rumpled pillow,
muslin sheets thrown back in langorous ructions
like the voluptuously curled petals
of a solitary white rose.

So close we can smell her sleep,
we see the impression where, just moments ago,
a lovely woman lay staring up at the ceiling, savoring
his last caress.

She has gone, now, beyond our view,
having stepped, on her beautifully arched white feet,
into the bathroom, and closed the door.


Dark Orchid (Inkpot Press 1993)

AUGUST
For my grandparents

Six a.m., and already the heat is up.
Along the lane, poplars raise their silver arms,
hold aloft the blue scarf of sky.

Sunflowers turn their faces east,
and the silo, a silver bullet tamped with corn,
sends heat waves rising through the fog.

Wild geese flap their migrant wings
over the cornstubble, settle like iron filings
toward the marsh, as if it were Earth's magnetic core.

Bronze crysanthemums, fierce and shaggy
as little bears, blaze where I planted them so long ago
I was not even aware of you. Now, I cannot imagine

the world away from here. The early air is still.
A small green garter wrinkles past our feet,
disappears into the cool orchard behind the house,

and the day seems to hold its breath. The land
spreads out before us, giving back the hard work
of our hands, our faith, our years.

Horses drowse in the paddock, their chestnut coats
leaf-dappled, sleek with sweat. From the north pasture,
a cow bell sounds. Crickets creak in the golden grass.

MŒrchen

Ringed by fierce brothers,
the princess is shorn,
the prince banished -- thorns
pounded into his pretty eyes.

Three seasons she watches
-- white hands against the glass --
as below her, beyond the hedge,
he turns away.

In the kitchen, the stove is out. The knave cowers;
the cook's amazed, frozen in mid-swing
-- all else is frozen, too -- balanced
between breath and breath.

A hundred times, grey dissolves
to green blaze, then Fall:
acrid scent of leaves
drying.

The spell winds like witches' hair
through the mind of the girl at the window,
lies -- an evil fog -- among exposed roots
of hawthorn, old rampion.

Somewhere in the Black Forest, aimless,
the blind prince rides. Near the tower,
strange dogs huddle, raise to the princess
their desolate, knowing gaze.


Poets at the Kent Canterbury Faire (NWR 1996)
 

© All Copyright, Marjorie Rommel
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.