Tree Riesener – Four Poems
reveilles
not a wooden bamboo tube
of cascading smooth pebbles
nor midnight storm
falling into
the tick-tock clack of a bamboo grove
only coins
falling from your trousers
when you came to bed
after the late movie
metallic cascading rain
but the air was not scented
of warm moist drops
some time later
a call slightly heard
just before dawn
not a mosque moved in overnight
nor summoning sirens
to a de-railed train
a blazing fire
only the radio at five
gradually arousing me
sleepy reluctant
to sweet old gospel music
blessing smell of baking bread
fragrance of arabica
hymn number 382
sweet george herbert
said he would bring
all his fresh cream to the lord
it was a hymn in church
this twenty-first century morning
looking back four hundred years
I guess it wasn’t easy in those days
milk the cow separate the cream
keep it cool
I remember
when I was a kid
the milkman left bottles on the porch
in wintertime
the cream that rose to the top
would freeze and lift off
the little cardboard circle lid
before our parents got up
we would slice off a disk
of frozen cream
a little circle like the communion wafer
eat it sprinkled with sugar
still that wouldn’t be the way
george herbert got cream
his would be fresh and foamy in a pitcher
cream must have been a little treat
he liked so much
he thought it would be nice
to share it with someone he loved
a good man george herbert
he knew about blankets for the poor
things like that so he understood
about cream being something
you could offer god
love letters
I wanted to tell you I loved you
my english words seemed trite
too useful
your eyes filled with tears
I prepared latin
to tell you again
you never showed up
got closer and closer
with catalan finno-serbic uguric
sound groups vibrated
full of potential
you left an excuse
on my machine
greek spoken quickly
some imaginary dialect
you glanced but turned away
ancient hebrew with invented sound,
sara’s lost language from
ur of the chaldees
you lingered
with some tentative
hope in your eyes
pitman’s shorthand on agile fingers
you held my hands
khan-destroyed tangut
sacred now to pain
some increase of
pressure
at desperate last I tried breathing
letters of fire on air
you opened your arms
now we sit long hours speaking silence
we are approaching truth
watching ready to reach out
touch lips lightly
abandon words
sleeping together
so many years
yet every day
I still yearn
for night to come
sometimes
when I’m alone
lost in dream,
I make a motion
with my left arm
just sort of a curve
into the air
and people in libraries
and on subways
stare at me
think poor thing
she has a condition
but I’m just imagining
that I’m in bed with you
lying on my right side
my left arm curled
around you
you know I’m there
even in your sleep
if it’s winter
you lift up your shirt
so I can touch your skin
put your hand over mine
not even waking up
and the night goes on
Author’s Statement on Beauty
The discussion of the relationship between beauty and truth has been going on for a long time. These two concepts are so entangled that we will never agree on which has more validity, what the relationship is. To me, both are unreliable. Truth? Well, as Pilate said, “What is truth?” Answers give birth to more questions. After thought, I think that for me beauty must be allied to honesty, which is a personal attribute whereas truth is more universal. Truth: We all grow old, and age can have great pain and suffering. Honesty: The old can have faces and souls of great beauty. Truth: War is brutal and evil. Honesty: Some sacrifice their lives in war to try to protect the innocent. So while the discussion between truth and beauty goes on, I will go with honesty entwined with beauty as a place in which I want to look for meaning.

Tree Riesener is the author of Sleepers Awake, a collection of fiction, winner of the Eludia Award, Sowilo Press; The Hubble Cantos, Aldrich Press; and EK, to be published in early 2017 by Cervena Barva Press. Her chapbook Angel Fever will be published by Ravenna Press as part of their Triple series in 2017. She has published three previous chapbooks: Liminalog, a collection of ghazals and sijo, Inscapes, poems of interior landscapes, and Angel Poison, thoughts on contemporary society. She is former Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal and former Contributing Editor to The Ghazal Page. More at: http://www.treeriesener.com.