The Interwoven Heart: SANDY, WINDOW POEMS AND QUILTED HEADS

Thursday, November 1, 2012

SANDY, WINDOW POEMS AND QUILTED HEADS

Weather: Low 60’s, sunny, gusty. 40’s tonight.

HURRICANE

I wake to a sound like shimmering satin–

A prom queen maneuvering

Through her moiré gown.

It’s Hurricane Sandy’s entourage,

Swirling leaves, creaking the cedar

That scratches my window,

Twirling the elm

And scattering her bones.

Clouds limned in vampire light

Fast-forward across a full moon.

Somewhere the tide is heaving against a beach

Far and away from here.

-C.Kane 10.29.2012

Dearest Readers,

Hurricane Sandy swished the hem of her wide flowing robe across Georgia this week, and gave us a taste of her cold windpower. It’s still chilly and a bit breezy, but I can’t complain. We were spared her fury this time.

The past few mornings I’ve awoken before dawn, and turned the crank on my old fashioned window to let in the smells and sounds of autumn. This stirred up memories and plumbed my soul. Two poems emerged in response.

ZERO MASS

That smell snuck in my little window

Like a ghost with zero mass.

She unfurled her wings upon entering,

Swirled around the ceiling and my bed,

Trailing a film of sheer intimations

Of soil mixed with rain and regret.

-C.Kane 10.28.2012

OUT OF THE BLUE

This knowing is a cloak

Across my shoulders

Bestowed by bluebirds perhaps,

When I was doing something else.

Out of the blue a deep wisdom

Arrived and filled the burrows

Where my blind digging was proceeding.

Like groundwater, it rose into these places

And quietly, without my looking,

Filled in the tunnels and softened the stones.

-C.Kane 10.27.2012

Finally, dear readers, at the risk of overwhelming you with more aspects of my self-portraits of feelings, here are seven vintage hankies that I laser-printed two years ago with my face photographed in the bathroom mirror– 89 consecutive days with my feeling of the moment. I’m quilting them individually now...not for a bedspread or a wall hanging...just for themselves in all their intimacy. It is tiny, delicate lapwork. I finish about one a week. I needed an antidote to the hole digging, tree hacking, ladder lashing and stone cutting last summer. Have you ever felt the need to act both big and small?

So here they are. Remnants of a Catholic school childhood. Hankies that belonged to Hazel, my mother, that the nuns allowed in the little breast pocket of my grammar school uniform. Appropriated now to investigate who I am in the midst of shifting emotions. 82 more to come.