Poems by Lois Marie Harrod
Archives: by Issue | by Author Name
Canticle for the Cardinal
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Spring 2012
Lois lives in the Stony Brook watershed in Hopewell, New Jersey, a sweet little town that has been here since the l8th century. Though close geographically, it seems far from the turnpike-oil-refinery New Jersey.
For his peaky cap in March gauze
above the junco capes, at the edge of the field, there, cardinal
For the cheer, cheer cheer in March fog
beyond the blue flit of obligation, thief and blessing, cardinal.
For the wet, wet, wet in March singe,
damp, his waxy wings among the cedar, cardinal.
For confession from the high ledge, tut, tut, tut,
bright sky scarlet as his churchy namesake, cardinal.
For the childlike whistle among the weeping cherry,
white blossoming among the misery, oh cardinal, cardinal.
© Lois Marie Harrod
Catalpa Leaves
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Fall 2016
The catalpa is emptying
like a theatre
from which no one is in a rush,
leaves floating like prayers at a Quaker meeting,
one . . . one, three. . . a breath . . .
two more detached and solemn
as I once wished my parents would take leave . . .
as my heart is leaving now
lilting its way through this branch
and those, what do I love?
Not the dress of the dry ballerina,
its odd stiff grace
not this orchestrated meander,
the coffins dawdling down.
© Lois Marie Harrod
Love as Snow
by Lois Marie Harrod
It must fall
It must cover
briar
and tree
devour
the shrunken pear
hide
the frightened sparrow
remake
the world wild
and shimmering
as it was
before
we came.
Previously published in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment
© Lois Marie Harrod
Something about Morning
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Fall 2020
You can miss it—
all the dying oaks and sagging roofs
between you and the dawn—
though if you sit in the rocking chair
by the second-story window
you can see apricot and azure silks
how they seem caught in the magnolia
which has already dropped its blossoms,
those little pale shoe soles
down on the new grass.
By the time you look again
the sky has gone gray.
© Lois Marie Harrod
Something about the Environment
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Spring 2021
Tonight I’m watching a video
several of my high school freshmen
posted on You-Tube.
They are rollicking a rowboat
on a shallow suburban lake.
And the boys—a flop-haired Ulysses
and his swabbies—are filming themselves
with difficulty, their shirtless torsos
and basketball shorts bobbing about
their beer-brine sea. They are filming,
their version of that sack of winds
the King of Breeze gave to our hero,
and in their version it looks like a plastic
shopping sack from Target.
As soon as our teenage hero closes his eyes,
a smirking friend opens the wind bag
and the camera begins to bob
the way it might in a seasick horror film.
I know they are hoping for an A—
and they’re having such a good time
how can I refuse?—though it looks
like their rowboat is about to capsize.
They have not asked how Aeolus
crammed those winds into a burlap purse
or whether they have any chance now
to return the bora, brickfielder and southerly buster
to their tote or stuff the sirocco, the shamoon,
the zonda back in their bottle,
or suck the typhoon and samoon
back to their lamp. And how can I condemn
their shenanigans--when I know
we all should have listened to Odysseus
50 years ago when we had the chance
to herd the hurricanes back into the bag.
First published in The Blue Nib 1/15/20
https://thebluenib.com/something-about-the-environment-featured-poet/
© Lois Marie Harrod
The Crow
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Fall 2011
The crow sat leafless
in the silent tree
while others whippoorwilled
and chickadeed
or whet, whet, whetted
the dawn
with their bloody blades
of song
until the mockingbird
like me
began singing
for the absentees
the cats and whistles,
cell phones and bells
car alarms, thistles
sirens and shells.
The mockingbird
my brother
singing for others
what he could not sing for himself.
But the crow sat leafless
in the silent tree
no song for himself
or another,
a homeless bird
his black cloak
hunched around
his thin shoulders
making us all
lonely.
© Lois Marie Harrod
The Widow Laments Another Autumn
by Lois Marie Harrod
From Canary Fall 2016
He planted trees
to make new this world–
as many as our plot
could bear.
For he was that kind
of man, one who
husbanded his acorns
against the sky descending.
Seed against sorrow,
he said, shade to cool
the warming woe.
The little we can do.
But he did not
foresee the fall out
of his un-wiving–
the thousand leaves.
Unsweatered and bare-armed
I rake and rake.
I do not know why
I live so long.
First published in Weatherings, ed. David Chorlton and Rober S. King. Lexington, Kentucky: FutureCycle Press.
© Lois Marie Harrod
What the Elephant Sings
by Lois Marie Harrod
I destroy
what sustains–
the grass, the trees–
as you have
taught me,
little man with a mouth.
I have learned
the thirty words
that enslave.
I spread the world
over my body–
the mud, the sea–
my brother lost his trunk.
He kneels to eat,
and soon he starves.
It has been years
since dressed in blue stones
I carried the queen.
© Lois Marie Harrod
Wind as Conceptual Artist
by Lois Marie Harrod
At first it was enough
to form and reform clouds
all day, a Zen experience,
breathing OOM into the firmament
and many of his productions
though temporary
went through startling shifts,
but isn’t surprise necessary?
So Wind spent years exploring
the possibilities of mist, vapor, fog
and when he had accumulated
any number of cumulus
and grown cirrusly bored,
he picked up grit to sand knobbly pines
down to barren plain,
sculptures which Rock recorded
with his there was
and there may have been stolidity.
Since Rock,
a slow and careful craftsman,
didn’t document everything
that Wind was tossing around,
so much, too much, gone with the wind,
recently Wind began to thread plastic bags
through beech and aspen trees,
something a little more permanent,
an idea he had gotten from Water,
who was adept at weaving bottles and boxes
into mats of rushes and reeds.
Once in awhile Wind
blew an empty trash can down the street
for its uncanny rumble,
but he usually let Flood float its contents
onto someone’s mired stoop
where Mud could etch it.
Wind noticed that Ocean
was also focusing on found objects,
an huge installation of tampon shells and rubber ducks
off and on a beach in Madagascar.
That was all right, Wind supposed,
they all had to borrow from each other,
but sometimes he grew angry
at the pale imitations–
and blew through a gallery or museum
like a typhoon,
leaving creative chaos in his wake.
Some critics panned
these works as piles of junk,
but others suggested they gave
the rest of the conceptual artists
more to work from.
After these rampages, though,
Wind would often envy
the quiet works of Puddle
who managed to recycle
Wind’s clouds with a tree or two,
but generally Wind thought
Puddle was minimal and derivative.
Puddle needed a bigger canvas.
It was Cold though
who most irritated Wind,
Cold, so adverse to change,
Cold who had lately taken up
photographing an ice cube
not melting. What was wrong
with him? Cold better wake up
to what was going on
in the Art World, ice as a medium
was so passé, the whole
planet was heating up,
and those polar sculptures
of his were melting
bear by bear.
© Lois Marie Harrod
You Could Save on a New Sky!
by Lois Marie Harrod
Internet car ad
At the lot where Skies are cheap.
I see a cute little Indigo in the last row
but the salesman tells me
the Azure’s bigger, safer.
With two children
you want protection.
So how many clouds per hour
can count on?–I try to sound
wise to his pitch–how much
thunder under the hood?
He gets out the specs.
One bolt of lightning from this baby
can toast
160,000 slabs of bread.
I don’t eat that many carbs,
I say, but it might be handy on long trips.
Oh, especially at night, he says,
when there is no moon.
I am concerned about emissions.
Any of these Skies a hybrid?
He looks confused. You know, I say
a Sky like a nectarine—half peach, half plum.
Oh, you mean the Sunset Sky—
we have lots of those with all the smog.
© Lois Marie Harrod