Standard Deviation
And Stands for a Torrent of Ampersands
July Fourth Honeypot
Advice from Jonas Berry
Harvest
Taking Care of Business
A Hearty Repast
Vapors Tossed
In Attendance
Connecting Rays
Inner Fruit
Vanitas
Resting after a fall never means
not getting up at all, but resting just until
worries begin their flight.
And for that relief, all that is needed
is a down pillow, and high windows to deliver
a share of moon’s ambient light.
Or is this break a dumbness
and excuse,
another silly respite
just to put vexations right?
With no more to lose, it is time now to fracture
useless worry.
This resolve places me handily
on the brink of happiness,
just at the door of delight,
neatly positioned at the edge of comfort.
And Stands for a Torrent of Ampersands
And how proceed?
Through wind and rain, by luck
and prowess until the edges frame
a mere garden patch
and any weeds are devil’s work and hell
to hoe and the winning weed has resisted
any wilting.
And how advance through this garden
while building core and muscle
and, at the same time, empathy?
And will the happy gardener,
having reaped and sown and hoed alike,
live and thrive?
Mine was the sort of intelligence
that lazed on a carpet under the dome
in excellent weather
in order to free itself from the menace
of melancholy.
Such an indulgence
would often cause the carpet to float,
restoring to lightness all sweet delicacies
of the mind, and prophesying that a select bowl of fruit
and flowers
would be ready for the table
that sits upon the floating carpet.
The bowl of fruit is a private kaleidoscope
of sweetened meditations
taking place under an assemblage of scudding clouds.
In this bowl is also a honeypot,
a flower resembling a chalice.
It acts as divine inspiration for a fruit and flower competition.
After plenty of clamor, pomegranate wins honors
for seeds galore and for literature.
The runner-up is pearly everlasting, each white flower
resembling a tiny wedding bouquet.
Imagine a woman in her wedding dress
on the Fourth of July! She floats on a carpet
holding a honeypot. It is excellent weather.
The carpet’s velvet nap is wearing
because it is real velvet and that is its course.
When next we meet at the corner store
to buy a piece of fruit,
do not be shocked, for we might bring up
our nightmares, or more seasonally,
country airs if it is the year of the lyric
and it is usually that.
Therefore, say what you know
but what is that compared to each working opus
gathering strength in the world at this moment?
Now grab the scythe and trim all ordinary impressions
whether shining on the hill or loitering on your horizon.
Let ideas come and their versions, too, unstoppable.
Any thought worth thinking
is compost for the next eloquent outpouring.
I tell you this so you may save
yourself from having to re-tell it to your fellows
who have never comprehended it
before I told it to you. I hope it is not precious of me to say
that I have no idea when I will have these fruitful thoughts
again. As a warning, they may be surreal.
To wish for more
than this sweet acre of fruit trees
is to wish in vain,
for here is plenty of fig, peach and plum.
I am sorting the fruit (with the eye of a doe)
according to ripeness and color.
On the picnic table is a vessel
heaped with fortifying morsels. Nearby
is a cup of clarified juice.
The remaining pulp is labeled
Attention well-paid.
A preserve of sunlight pierces
the shade of the fruit trees.
Too much rainfall
has blackened the leaves.
The doe is speeding by in the rain.
On the ochre path to the orchard
we meet some seekers of fruit.
We converse about our choices
and weigh which fruits are the most well-appointed,
considering how much more economical it would be
to let them ripen on the branch, thus giving them time
to engage with their fellow fruits about the rude hands
soon to pluck them,
disturbing their cool nights and charmed daylight
as they grow riper daily at the sun’s pleasure.
By that we weigh and measure their fitness
and attend to ours.
Feeling sultry as the day is long,
warning each other not to overdue,
we go on gathering
because now we are older and need more fuel
since life has been unfolding in weary part and parcel
carried along by bits of bitumen to warm the stove
and keep the flame alive.
I abhor a list
for its dullness, its lack of insight,
arcane references.
What I have been saying all along
I will say again, although specifications
as to meaning are not yet firm.
Please get back to me
the day after next.
By then I will be able to reconsider operations.
As of now, I have swept the orchard clean
and started over, old husks buried,
grasses native to the watched soil
cleanly mown.
The field of operations is fertile with new thoughts
and persuasions.
Some lilies can read thoughts
but at this meal there are nasturtiums on the plate.
There are those who would not eat a flower,
feeling full already.
Meditations are vapors tossed.
Their return carries messages
and provocations
sacred to the process.
As part of the innocence project
to protect against prejudice,
most meditations invite two worlds—
marvels of the mind unconfined
and those which can be seen and heard
such as mourning doves minding their eggs.
Leaving them untouched means
these meditations can be archived,
preferably at the University of History and Inquiry
which holds every truth.
All tickets are on the table
and a merry treat it will be,
the pressures of preparation
long forgotten.
That is how the day should flow,
with a hey-nonny-no
and a dance to go.
Attending the concert
means packing only a few reminders.
I wend my way to the arena
without error or self-judgment.
Yet there are in the bag explicit cautions
which trail each other as the clouds,
expansive and close,
a useful omen for the watchful soul.
To keep going in such a manner
means assuming a behavior
bold enough to stomp through fire
whether for mirth or misery I am uncertain.
Right now, a little ferocity would go a long way
because waiting outside the theatre is that hero-loving
audience of which I am part.
My presence here is alive
with references and points.
I have recorded in my journal
(having used this weapon before)
all the ways to join the crowd
and wake replenished.
If agile enough to negotiate a slope
it is recommended
to escalate to a hill, even if that hope
resembles Hilton’s lost horizon. At least
there is sky involved and no sign
of a crater below. Therefore
no need of ladders, weaponry,
or papal prayers, for sky
has as much to do with rain as with prayer
and that argues for fair days ahead,
ensuring that the Perseids
will shower, as usual, on August 11
in the Western Hemisphere
and the connecting rays
of patience and equilibrium might prevail
over slope, hill and horizon.
Little do I know about the origins of calamity.
I did not travel far enough
for tears to fall
for on the route before me lay only the mystifying,
the fortifying,
the wry and the contradictory.
There were memories, too.
Now that I have the hang of it, more
memories come knocking,
not many burdens among them
or perhaps they were just being carefully handled
like a melon
so no bruising would occur
and the proud and perfect melon could then be served
alongside the cod caught, salted and stored.
Remembering, supposing, counting, assessing
is no way to spend the time. It is an overdose
of meditation.
Swim the endless pool, instead, to manage
breath. Indulge in floating.
Complete the crystallizing opus.
Why wait for tears to fall?
As for me, I find that certain kinds of misunderstanding
are full of useful hints.
Saul Bellow, Humbolt’s Gift.
It was a curious, unexpected happening,
a peculiarity which was becoming ever more curious
perhaps due to an original misunderstanding
about the circumstances, let us say, of my existence
and the elements that plague me including –or leading to–
oddities in blood pressure, about which I have had
numerous conversations with my heart.
They only led to more disruptive moods.
My canvas, if I could paint at all,
would depict my Vanitas, all the concrete elements
of this life which had meaning and were restorative
whether hinted at or in the form of such helpful assurances
as a needle, a spool of thread, a glove.
I imagined that once the needle was threaded
and the glove’s worn fingers sewn before the fault line gave way,
the rest of the work would be done to capacity,
easily executed without contradiction or misunderstanding.
Irene Mitchell is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently My Report from the Uwharries (Dos Madres Press, 2022). Irene Mitchell: Selected Poems, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2021. Formerly poetry editor of Hudson River Art Magazine, Mitchell is known for her collaborations with visual artists and composers. She was a recent Associate Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
