Poetry

I am in the process of putting together my first poetry collection, with the working title After the Red Rose. It will contain a selection of poems in both meter and free verse, written mostly between 1988 and 2005. Many of these were originally published in the 1990s in The Lyric, Hudson Valley Echoes, SageWoman, The Red Queen, and other zines and journals.

Most of the poetry I'm writing now is formal verse, principally sonnets. I'll announce publication of these new pieces, as it occurs, on the front page of this site. Meanwhile, here are a few selections from After the Red Rose.

 
INVITATION

She sends her call
soft kiss on the breeze
blowing down
from the mountains
scent beckoning
from the mountains
drawing you on
promise of sticky sweetness
drawing you on
to some wild orchard where trees
blossom and green and offer their fruit
all at a time
offering fruit
to waiting desire
bending down branches
to answer your thirst
knowing your hunger
bending down branches
You
have been to this place
before
barefoot on the green
juice on your chin
in some wild orchard
where every breathless breath invites you
back

TO MY LOVE ASLEEP

Sometimes when I come late to bed I lie
awake until a passing headlight beams
in through the blinds and shows your dreaming eyes.
Then I might wonder what unconscious streams
your night-loosed mind and soul are sailing on,
what sights appear upon the shores, and in
your secret ship what forms you don.
I wonder, would I know you for my kin
and you know me if I could somehow drift
myself into your dreams, or is the rift
of daily separate ways too great to span
in simple sleep--but what in dreaming can
not be attempted? Steering by desire,
I sail to meet you at the beacon's fire.
RITE OF SPRING

(written after seeing the Joffrey's reconstruction of Diaghilev's ballet)

chosen, shaking
first steps quivering
look the sun in the eye
begin my dance
the Bearskins close by
watching with all of them
waiting
I think I will never move again
after this
flying fast for them
watching
for me
slow
each movement
stretch of my arms
toward the sun
stamp of my foot
on the sod
laborious
as though I watch myself
through muddied water
of spring streams
fierce and full down the mountain
not even reflecting
the sun I dance to
until
wracked with dancing
I drop and become
earth
their earth
wed with the sun


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SNOW LEOPARD, BRONX ZOO

My daughters, born here, play
at stalking, chasing, mock attacks
on twitching tails, pausing now
to nuzzle deep my tolerant belly.
We are on display, and humans stand
to gawk at us, and shout and mimic
feline speech, devoid of sense.
Their emotions clear the bars with ease,
and none of them feel fear, although
I have paws the size of small
human heads, and teeth their fingers' length.

My daughters bound over unnatural boulders
to the tops of unnatural crags
whose mitigated steepness assures survival,
whose artifice conceals the cage doors--
we are blasphemously kept inside at night.
I rise to pace, with falseness underfoot,
as the keeper arrives with dead meat,
unpungent flesh of birds that never graced
my tameless mountains....
Dear Gods! If only I could hunt!
To smell the essence in the wind,
to cock the ear for clues,
to make myself invisible until the final rushing moment--
the blood and broken neck, the earned feast!

My daughters cannot learn this joy.
Unwary mouthfuls seldom come
within the bars. But on the other side,
small, well-fatted humans point and bare
their teeth at me. I taste my teeth,
contract and expand like thunder.
There is no answering flight--the bars
halt me, and my prey stares. I settle
my eyes on it all the while I consume
what the keeper has brought.
Imagination feeds me.


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Photo by Fox Gradin, Celestial Studios Photography.

copyright © 2006-2008 by Kathryn Hinds
No reproduction or distribution without permission.