The compressed form of poetry often draws the mind to abstract thought, yet poetry also revels in detail, with its eye on the particular. Producing stanzas at a keyboard demands more rumination than manual dexterity but my eye-hand coordination registers somewhere in the disabled range. I feel quite comfortable in the world of ideas but I need reminders to observe specifics, and the need to improve my bodily coordination is undeniable. So I took up sketching to discipline my power of observation and to train my hands to record what I see. I do not aspire to render scenes with precision—that’s what photographs are for. My sketches are responses to, not replications of, the images I see. I love watercolors for the way they swim around on the page as they mix and granulate. Watercolor sketching gives me a way to look, listen, and love the world around me.
TULSA
Roadmap: Route 66
The Mother Road birthed
those green dinosaur gas station signs,
miles of dashed white lines,
single-story motor lodges.
Metro Diner in neon magenta promises
red vinyl seats, linoleum floors,
women in white aprons, peach-colored dresses—
clattering plates, coffee from bowling-ball pots
poured into carnival glass mugs.
The old black and white shield
says it’s safe to get your kicks
in your Thunderbird.
The Mother Road divides her Tulsa children
north and south, black and white
like the map, like the postcard.
A pawn shop, a boarded-up grocery store
mark a strip mall on North Peoria.
The streets flood when it rains.
Under skies muddy with exhaust
another Mother maps her scars—
pavement ruptured by turbid streams
full of fertilizer, empty of fish— she traces
her different course across mountain and prairie”from Chicago to LA.
(In Oklahoma Summer, page 18)
OKLAHOMA PRAIRIE
Self-Portrait, Autumn Prairie
– After Donika Kelly
I am a body turning,
furred in bluestem drained of green.
I gasp and grieve the browning goldenrod.
Holding back heavy pollen
from the prairie wind
for monarch’s winter flight.
I am spent—I send them up,
storm-anointed, washed in sunlight.
Once-verdant switchgrass greys
with the coyote’s coat.
My brittle bones—remains
of an ancient sea, settled on
earth’s molten core. Summer heat
seeps out, scissortails retreat.
I tuck rabbit warrens in the crooks
of my arms. Mice skitter,
moles burrow down, wait with me,
quiet, for the harriers— grey ghosts
winging low on air-cloaks
over endless ranks of hills.
I bend with bison’s weight,
slow the trek of white-tailed deer
through post oak woods, quicken the twitch
of her ear-flicks. Her eyes dart, alert
for bobcat’s spring and pounce.
Lush vervain—tawny now—alive
with white-crowned sparrows.
I am become
this umber season,
a body turning.
OREGON COAST
Consuming Tide
I could eat the sea,
far whiter than an egg—
its cold cuisine
frosts with saline
whipped to a froth
around its bouldered rim.
Shells scraped clean
iced in agates
laced with kelp—
what of
my leavings?
*Italicized line is from Sappho, fragment 167.
(In Sappho Prompts, page 12)