Poems of Natural Ripple

The Catlin Gabel School Senior Poetry Writing class final projects.

2022 CGS Senior Poetry Chapbooks

They don’t tend the Shakespeare Garden in the Winter They let the fracturing leaves smother the hellebores so that they must burst through to bloom You can hardly see Prospero’s magic or Fair Bianca’s beauty

If I were to plant a garden in your mind I would care for it all year I would plant feathered flowers based on the words you sign your letters with I’d find a rose named your soulsmate, a tree called love, and song birds to sing till summer My nails would fill with soil keeping the bulbs of your thoughts in alphabetical order I’d let my knees scab crawling around plucking the aphids from your pierced leaves I’d make myself a ladybug, I’d make myself the sun, I’d make myself the plummeting rain

All because I’ve never believed in the necessity of seasons: I’d like to see you bloom all year I’d like to sit on the little stone bench in the Shakespeare Garden of your mind&nbsp; On a February morning, knowing that you are happy, and your hellebores are blooming&nbsp;

But today, outside of your little head, away in your own little climate&nbsp; The rhododendrons are blooming like none of us have ever seen before Early this year, but in your garden they’ve been blooming all year and you never tire Of their immortal beauty, their fluttering faces, facing your fluttering smile Your smile I tended through the February frosts and the August fevers So that your thoughts could wander free of responsibility, and tend my own garden

You are my garden and my gardener, my occupation and my escape, my soul and her mate

to: the self I get to be in this moment

many thanks and acknowledgements to: everyone who has read these poems and offered their thoughts liz, who structured my craft of poetry the people and places who have inspired these poems

I. Peonies Grow... II. Gallery 201 III. Tarnished of Love IV. A Therapy of Sorts V. Our Shakespeare Garden

This is the place I die&nbsp; When the words come to wailing dinners Buried with my mother’s silver earrings : pendulums from my bleeding piercings This is where I live Family crest upon my pinky Histories of gold lost in June grass &nbsp; unknown to my father He would cry for me and for me and for the tangled tree Tears on the pomegranatetarnish the silver I polish and polish But mother’s jeans will never fit me : corduroy Father’s consonants are softer : ja Through watering eyes we look like each other But my hair will never be as red red my blood my bleeding heart my bleeding ears

To shut my shattering thoughts&nbsp; I was told to grieve my body Take on the heaviest burden For a body that had yet to die Who knows how to grieve my body I should be grudgingly grateful For a body that has yet to die Whose stomach still swells I should be grudgingly grateful&nbsp; But I hate it for being alive For its swelling stomach That eats my guilts and screams I hate if for being a life Capable of more than this act Eating my guilts and screaming But I hate that I don’t let it I'm capable of more than this act So I shut my shattering thoughts But I hate that I don’t let myself Take on the heaviest burden To grieve a living body To love a grieving body

Peonies Grow... after "I Died for Beauty but was Scarce" by Emily Dickinson

Peonies grow from my ears in the Spring The daffodils dance in my hair Bees chat away — but all they can say Are Truths I’d rather not hear They taunted softly, “Summer is ending — your freckles are fading” “Oh really? I’ve thrown out my mirrors” “That Beauty is lost then” “The Beauty of Time?” —“No,” they replied&nbsp; It’s the Beauty I hold in my blossoms — That bud and wilt with the fall of the seasons Whisping away on the coming of fall Flowers returning — only once I’ve forgotten their Truths —

To me they whisper away Drawn out laments Immortalized in pigments Confined to gold plaster frames There’s a wordless agreement Among the visitors to stay: wordless shhh To speak in thoughts With wandering eyes To hear the cries Of the painter’s brides To gossip with fruit baskets Yearning for more Yearn for the the blue hued room&nbsp; A shade lighter than the sky&nbsp; Artificial in practice Natural in life&nbsp; Time in conversation with the muses In conversation with my shoes Shuffling to a pause Enjoy the art And the silence shhhhh

poems of natural ripple by julia kiaer

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