“The Wood Thrush Sings”

A poem for those burdened, and wakeful at night--

At the end of day, at the beginning of night
you lift the bed covers so I can climb in by.
The bed is a cave, the sheets cool as limestone
except where you’ve warmed the warp and weft.
The bed is a nest we fold ourselves into, belly
to back, knee to kneefold, wristbone to bone.
Our ribs make a boat of the bed to carry us
to a land of dreams, to what will happen next.

At 3 am I wake up, maybe the IRS, the taxes,
or room after room unpacking hundreds of boxes.
If I put each thing in its place, there will be
a place for the boat to land where the clock
doesn’t tick, where the body is unlocked
from pain, where the wood thrush sings after rain.

To hear the wood thrush sing, go to:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wood_Thrush/sounds

--Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010

“Skating on the Erie Canal”

A poem for the last of the ice—as the skating rink
closes in Syracuse’s Clinton Square—frozen
on top of the channel of the old Erie Canal.

When she answered, Mama said into the phone:
I heard you laugh a minute ago. Also her TV
interview with Tom Brokaw, her sifting flour over
the threshold, pointing to her own footprint as thief,
and the rat that lived in my room. Her right mind—
do I care? That time her voice laughed back at mine.
Was it like the photo? Great-grandbaby Ruth rests
across her knees, they look into each other, eyes
all the way back to me before I had will and words
to wreak havoc with predestination. Now Ruth
circles round and round the ice rink, singing Free
falling as the p.a. says no tagging, no racing back
against the flow, now she’s skating backwards,
now she flaps her arms and shouts, You won’t see
a penguin do this! Now she stands to say goodbye
between my knees, looking long into my eyes,
and I hold still so she can find whatever echo
she can, if time’s wrinkle rhymes with grit, grief,
grin, her eyes winkling out some link, around
and around the rink the song flies, the loud blade,
time, cuts through the ice, device of pain and found.

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010

“A Muster of U.S. Soldiers at the University”

And another look at spring—

The soldiers assemble on the Quad, with their hut-
hut, their about-about-about face, quite common-
place these days, camouflage not needed, grass
greens up under their boots, trees flush pink,
the soldiers draw near, sit at the next desk, chair,
near and more near, the smiling faces next to us
in the school corridor, and overhead the CNN chat
is how one of them put a bullet to the head, heart,
or throat of someone across an ocean, desert, sea
where cargo ships big as towns carry oil and guns,
plowing up the water emptied of fish by trawlers
big as factories, and on the shore the fishers
in the villages pick up guns and take to motor-
boats to catch what they will, exchange of resource,
cash for tanker captain, risking bullet to the head
and the name pirate, bandit, as U.S. soldiers snipe
from a hidden place, are called heroes at home,
but some of them whimper and cry as they sleep,
I know, I’ve heard them as they dream and weep,
not the future but the past, that small hole gapes
wide and wider, a mouth spewing red, sweeps
them out to sea, drowning in sight of shore, people
who stand and watch the uniform flounder and sink,
camouflaged by sun-mottled and blotched waters,
blues, greens, browns, as from the village, fishers
push out their gull-winged dhow and fly overhead,
they lower their nets past him, the huge wire baskets
gather up what will be good to eat, barracuda, red
snapper, hamour, oranda, taken home in straw baskets.

For more information on the U.S. military, profit and Africa, see:

Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor, Pan-African News Wire
“Pentagon Targets Africa: Why Somalis Seize Ships”
Workers World, 13 Apr 2009
http://www.workers.org/2009/world/horn_of_africa_0423/

Johann Hari, “You Are Being Lied to About Pirates”
London Independent, 4 January 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html


Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010

“In the Land of Oz”

A poem in homage to the last winter snow
where I live now, in Syracuse, NY, where
L. Frank Baum wrote many of the Oz books
I read as a child in Alabama, anticipating
my love of feminist science fiction and
lesbian adventure.

The side-snow is virgin surface, unmarked
except twigs fallen from a stripped oak,
no human footprint, or animal, to mar
the beginning, like the moon’s dirt before
the spaceship came. But I was never one
to take the first step. Instead I climbed
into the story, the rainbow-striped balloon,
up following her feet, then side-by-side,
drifted toward any emerald-spired town
where everyone could live a little odd. Yet,
so, here I am alone, walking one more time
around Rose Hill Cemetery, looking down
at the ice-petal prints going uphill, the worn
slushed path, because and glad my craving
body said Be brave and go ahead, the hot
mouth opened and stuck out its tongue,
to melt every jot and tiddle of snow that fell,
to eat and mate the strange pollen drifting
leisurely down from the otherworldly sky.


Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010

"Mourning Cloak"

Did you know some butterflies
hibernate?! A poem from Goethe Park--

No snow, no bloom, the world is brown,
tattered, nothing to read in the dead leaves,
and still the longing for hope, not rhetoric,
the suddenly semaphoring wings that flap
fast, right under my nose, a quick prism,
crimson, scalloped yellow, blue-eyed snap
the book later tells me is mourning cloak,
folded all winter into bark, named as if
it grieves. But something wrapped in that
flimsy cloth survived a minus-twenty freeze
and is now lit on an oak trunk, ready to lick,
ready to wade head-first through the sap
sweating sweetly through the wrinkled cracks.

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010

"The Transmigration of the Body"

A poem to celebrate spring—and our move north
a year ago, from Jersey City to Syracuse.

Every move recalls every other move,
said the youngest son, as he heaved
my boxes into his car. My body to leave
for an electric pathway yet unknown.
Will I be suddenly packing the kitchen
up, another load in the migration north?
Will I be throwing away the dried roses
by my desk, frosted with dust, dessicated,
and pause to crumble the closed buds
and suddenly smell tobacco, cinnamon?

"Going Over the Falls"

In this poem, a dream about Niagara Falls,
a hope to be able to return there together,
as Leslie continues to struggle for health—

Why write poetry? The problem with prose
is the beginning, middle, end, sentences.
I never want life with you to end. I say:
We never took those dance lessons. The spin,
the dip. There’ll always be something not
yet done. One more trip to see the Falls fall.
I dreamed you said: Let’s go over together,
and I said: But I would die. Not you, not you,
in the dream, not you. We’ve had the talk
about ashes, named the north and south
rivers to be sprinkled with us like pollen,
specks to meet later in some thundercloud
bloom, zigzag, boom! If we see the Falls
again, you’ll flash your smile beside me
and not be pouring through my hands, dust
to sparkle up out of the mist, disembodied
eternal beautiful matter. But not you.

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivs
Creative Commons 2010