Dennis Daly – Five Poems
Sargent’s Pond
On a Snowy Morning
I’ve had a scare just once or twice,
That icy sheen can flip you back.
Bowing trees freeze paradise,
They genuflect to what you lack.
That icy sheen can flip you back,
Bang you up, even steal your name.
They genuflect for what you lack,
These players of a winter’s game.
Bang you up, even steal your name,
As if your name still sounded true.
These players of a winter’s game
Follow paths of dread toward rendezvous.
As if your name still sounded true,
Bowing trees freeze paradise,
Follow paths of dread toward rendezvous.
I’ve had a scare just once or twice.
Exceptions
A strangling of biology
Over the pond’s surface psyche,
Green carpets of luscious algae.
Life insists on hierarchy.
Over the pond’s surface psyche
The deepening suffocation.
Life insists on hierarchy.
Chemicals kill off creation.
The deepening suffocation
Of fish and blood-cold vertebrates,
Chemicals kill off creation
Construct no familiar cognates.
Of fish and blood-cold vertebrates
Men tell tall tales of death and birth
Construct no familiar cognates.
Exceptions, though, would have great worth.
Men tell tall tales of death and birth,
Green carpets of luscious algae.
Exceptions, though, would have great worth,
A strangling of biology.
Pretense
This screech owl stares hard back at me.
Rigidly framed in his tree hollow,
He deliberates so easily,
His dread gaze, the bite of an arrow.
Rigidly framed in his tree hollow,
Wondrous sentinel of origin,
His dread gaze, the bite of an arrow
That strikes home after dusk’s contagion.
Wondrous sentinel of origin,
He demands a final recompense,
That strikes home after dusk’s contagion,
Time enough for another pretense.
He demands a final recompense.
He deliberates so easily.
Time enough for another pretense,
This screech owl stares hard back at me.
Vanity
Ideas mold things into beauty or bad,
The binary code alerts our judgment.
Without perception the neutral doodad
Sleeps soundly the sleep of the innocent.
The binary code alerts our judgment,
Flushing the landscape with sunset or rise.
Sleeps soundly the sleep of the innocent,
Each matter in form we praise or despise.
Flushing the landscape with sunset or rise,
Setting the curvature of consciousness,
Each matter in form we praise or despise.
This arty approach conveys its own bliss.
Setting the curvature of consciousness,
The stuff of earth sounds out simplicity.
This arty approach conveys its own bliss,
Scorns definition. All is vanity.
The stuff of earth sounds out simplicity.
Without perception the neutral doodad
Scorns definition. All is vanity.
Ideas mold things into beauty or bad.
Roots
Gnarled roots rut up the trail of seven tubs,
Men cliff-climb over the rush of silence,
Light the shadow place innocent of shrubs,
Hugging highlands of wisdom and patience.
Men cliff-climb over the rush of silence,
Clinging to the world’s roll, the curve of bark,
Hugging highlands of wisdom and patience,
Into the melt, beyond any landmark.
Clinging to the world’s slow roll, the curve of bark
As they ascend and feel the tongues of fire,
Into the melt, beyond any landmark,
There, transfigured, a few don new attire.
As they ascend and feel the tongues of fire,
Light the shadow place innocent of shrubs,
There, transfigured, a few don new attire.
Gnarled roots rut up the trail of seven tubs.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
When the form and content of creation match up or complement each other the unexpected happens—beauty. Every moment of aesthetic absorption changes our consciousness and alters ever so slightly the meaning and perhaps the future of human kind. Artistic techniques, if successful, vanish into audience perception. Their echoes mold and quite possibly illuminate.
I find that the poetry of pantoums, with its interlocking patterns and intensity of repetitions, reinforces this process, often accentuating, and sometimes transfiguring until a consensual communion is reached. Beauty in this iteration becomes a rowing toward wonderment.
Dennis Daly has published five books of poetry. The most recent is a translation entitled Twenty-One Ghazals by Alisher Navoiy. More at dennisfdaly.blogspot.com.