Dandelion Fireworks
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/24/1/Dandelion-Fireworks/Page1.html
Ramón E. Martínez
Ramón E. Martínez grew up in New Mexico and Arizona. Poems from his full-length collection, The Receipt of Fern Seed have appeared in: A Poetry Mag, American Poetry Review, Balcones, Bilingual Review, Black Warrior Review, Cape Rock, Century, Contact II, Croton Review, Gila Review, Glens Falls Review, Graham House Review, The Greenfield Review, Inlet, Inscape, Panoply, Rio Grande Writer's Newsletter, Riversedge, Víaztlan, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is currently seeking a publisher for The Receipt of Fern Seed.By Ramón E. Martínez
Published on 01/18/2009
1.
Believing together
is more than a launch of boats,
the dew on dandelions,
the sorrow of worry;
getting there is more than the drive
in a car that blazes forward
on the road's sunset of oil.
Believing together
is more than a launch of boats,
the dew on dandelions,
the sorrow of worry;
getting there is more than the drive
in a car that blazes forward
on the road's sunset of oil.
--For Norman Dubie
1.
Believing together
is more than a launch of boats,
the dew on dandelions,
the sorrow of worry;
getting there is more than the drive
in a car that blazes forward
on the road's sunset of oil.
2.
Wherever I go, it is the damnation
of wheels that turns me,
that dynamos kites
to pity. Their noses dip; Japanese fish
fly on flagpoles; bronze elk
in the garden by the lake watch over
the poet who drowned in the swimming pool.
His spine became the long kelp string
of the islands.
3.
Diamonds are irregularly shaped,
multiple triangles. The depth of one
is the height of the other.
What we believe is doubled;
what we curse is faceted--the facility
of light. I never believed
in lightposts. Now, I keep secrets
as if they are mine.
Black books on shelves that swallow the light.
4.
Coal digs deep into earth.
It shines in canyons. Hear its pain
in the throats of canaries singing in shafts.
Blackness becomes iridescent.
5.
A glowworm blooms like a shining river in beer signs.
What I believe was formed long ago by pressure
and convexity of coal asleep in the vise of centuries.
6.
Nuns watch over my grief; a hunchbacked priest
guards diamonds where they take naps. Beauty
is watching something becoming. Sensing a chill draft
in a black hall interrupted by light, intercepted by
eyes,
fireworks on a string in the dark illuminate
ancient dandelions on which fugitives pin their
luck and last hopes--
on windy, ravishing dark.
Copyright © Ramón E. Martínez, 1999, 2009. All Rights Reserved.
1.
Believing together
is more than a launch of boats,
the dew on dandelions,
the sorrow of worry;
getting there is more than the drive
in a car that blazes forward
on the road's sunset of oil.
2.
Wherever I go, it is the damnation
of wheels that turns me,
that dynamos kites
to pity. Their noses dip; Japanese fish
fly on flagpoles; bronze elk
in the garden by the lake watch over
the poet who drowned in the swimming pool.
His spine became the long kelp string
of the islands.
3.
Diamonds are irregularly shaped,
multiple triangles. The depth of one
is the height of the other.
What we believe is doubled;
what we curse is faceted--the facility
of light. I never believed
in lightposts. Now, I keep secrets
as if they are mine.
Black books on shelves that swallow the light.
4.
Coal digs deep into earth.
It shines in canyons. Hear its pain
in the throats of canaries singing in shafts.
Blackness becomes iridescent.
5.
A glowworm blooms like a shining river in beer signs.
What I believe was formed long ago by pressure
and convexity of coal asleep in the vise of centuries.
6.
Nuns watch over my grief; a hunchbacked priest
guards diamonds where they take naps. Beauty
is watching something becoming. Sensing a chill draft
in a black hall interrupted by light, intercepted by
eyes,
fireworks on a string in the dark illuminate
ancient dandelions on which fugitives pin their
luck and last hopes--
on windy, ravishing dark.
Copyright © Ramón E. Martínez, 1999, 2009. All Rights Reserved.