Steven's Poetry/Writing: September 2002 Archives

Another one from the vaults--ancient beyond reckoning. Okay, not that old, but old enough.

Tiers of Women
Steven Riddle

There is a churning
unreality
about everything she does.
A smoldering chaos
that folds
in tight coils in her wake.
The atmosphere is
charged by her
discharged by her
in slick
second-point
splits of light.
She doesn't know
where to go
or who to be

lets her soul
fly thread-bound
angel on its
silvery lead.
And wakes up
someone new
every day
forgetting the way
she used to be.

©2002 Steven Riddle

Here's another poem, much older, and more for fun. It is loosely patterned after an idea first presented by the Greeks and Romans and taken up in earnest by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man. This is the idea of treating serious thoughts and investigations in poetry rather than prose. It doesn't hold up well in the 21st century, but that may be more perception than reality.

Making Sense Out of Time
Steven Riddle

The bridge
between this second and the
next is burned before
this second has elapsed.

How lightly we talk about time
as running or flowing as a brook
when we all know it shakes
and shudders, stumbling

one second to the next,
with never a certainty that we
have chosen the right way
to see it move

or that one second will
not crowd another
and trip the crucial domino
that will spin out some grand design.

We know we cannot trust
glass metal, springs and gears,
we use the moon to spell out months,
out place in the sun to name a year.

If we stop all clocks,
calendars and dates
have we stopped time?
Or if we use them still

and let them run does time move
all the same, or is it some
vast lake which moves little
if at all, and we move

through it, measuring
by our stroke as we go? Is time like
space, measured in length and breadth
and depth that we have not yet seen?

Now check, stop and see
if time flows past
or if we flow
and time stands still.

© 2002 Steven Riddle

This time it's mine, and because it is very highly personal, don't expect that meaning will necessary leap out at you. It was also highly experimental for me at the time, although I think most traces of that have more or less vanished. Just as a point of information--I consider the silver birch and the white birch among the most beautiful trees in the world (at least for northern climes).

The Meaning of the Birch
Steven Riddle

In a twist of air on an ragged day,
the last of a raw burnt-out stretch of ember days and nights,
when the only thoughts have been the pains of yesterday
and tomorrow, the hours stretching to the white
hot edge of time and whatever passes for a life,
one afternoon I tasted a trace of mystery,
a tantilizing breath, a glimpse of knife-
sharp childhood days seeking the perfect tree--
a birch to plant in the neglected nation of our back
yard, in the wide stretch of green ocean that became,
on the shores of memory, the home ground, rack
and hew of all the days of summer, curiously the same,
and yet perfect in distant vision. And in that moment
catching that tremor of a taste, I think I can
pierce the veil that keeps me here in ageless days pent
up and longing for a time that now is
more than memory and
less than real. How can the longing heart not skip a beat,
when it stands transfixed by that it can never again meet.

©2000,2002 Steven Riddle

Poem du Jour

This is one of three that I wrote over a very unproductive twelve-month period. I was engaged in trying to write some serious prose at the time so there was little time for poetry. But I liked this a great deal--it was one of the many outpourings of grace received during a protracted (nine month) Ignatian Retreat that moved me firmly and relentlessly into my Carmelite vocation. The title is still a working title that doesn't quite indicate the theme I had in mind. I need to give the casual reader more of a clue, but for the moment, this will do.

Waiting on Perfection
Steven Riddle

I dream of a last rose of summer
bloomed late
in August that somehow outlasts
autumn's weary weight,
and meets December on its doorstep
still white
like a perfect winter morning's first light.

Full blown, bloomed,
brilliant in the wind
that winds around the month,
it waits on snow;
each petal braced to bear
the winter white
and chill beneath it.

And though it waits
on snow, is kissed
by ice instead and wakes
glittering more brilliantly
than dew and frost and snow
could make--
its petals perfected under
icy weight.

© 1996, 2002 Steven Riddle

I acknowledge that most occasional, strike that, almost all occasional poetry is bad. Nevertheless. sometimes, because the occasion does not depart, it is needed. Therefore I contribute my meager offering to the cause.

Threnody for the Victims of Abortion
Steven Riddle

Weep for the children
unborn, unheard, unmourned.
Weep for the mothers
with unseen scars
that harden their lives
and selves.
Weep for the people
lost in themselves
who think they've
found freedom.
Weep for the nation
reduced to
whimpering for rights
and devouring its young.
Weep for the trespass
of God's law
that marks us
all.
Weep for the land
that does not know
it should weep.

©2002 Steven Riddle

Poem for an Approaching Date

In honor of a coming change of date and the Patroness of the Missions (though this poem has nothing whatsoever to do with the latter):

October First
Steven Riddle

Old ladies still
cling to September's masts,
climb the rigging
of their laundry lines
to hang sheets that bear
the wind.
They go to captain
old wooden ships driven before
these sails,
to watch as they pass
over the dateline into October.

At night they hang
kerosene lanterns
from pegs--a sign to others
passing.

Long winter ahead--they signal
over vast seas
that separate each
from her neighbor,
They greet the change
with great woolen shawls pulled over
shriveled shoulders and salute
each other from deck chairs
on the bow.

c 2002 Steven Riddle

One Last, More Serious Poem

Okay, here's one last orignially unfinished poem that decided it was actually finished after all. I had three more lines that trailed off into oblivion, but upon reflection, the poem called itself complete as I present it below.

Impression: San Antonio
Steven Riddle

From a perch in Hill Country my fake-adobe cell
opens onto iron grillwork of a ledge, not a balcony,
that hangs tightly over a handsbreadth
of green and flowers. "Just press here. Some folks seen
a wasp's nest and called and we come right out and
take care of it." I thank him and pass a small
baton of green and see him out. A wasp's nest--
I'm thinking now how did I happen to be here--all
the way across the river and the wide expanse
of plain from where my heart cries out to be,
here in the city that sat at the crossroads of
a history--reduced now to a swarming black sea
of twisted, braided byways. As I look
into the distance
will the church that once transformed a world
loom up and fill the horizon? Or will the waste
of plastic malls and all-the-same eateries mold
this landscape into unhallowed ground.

©2002 Steven Riddle

This one needs some work about the edges, but I like the central image--I need to rethink certain aspects of how it is handled and have been questioned as to whether it might not be too esoteric.

Bubble Chamber
Steven Riddle

Golden Alpha skater
inscribes arcs in ice
chills steel
to cut sunlight.

Six straight lines
around a central hub
perfectly skated
forward and back.

Alpha stops
to admire his work,
sees a spiral that
worms away from the center.

Six straight lines
perfectly skated, forward and back--
a spiral inscribed
that was never skated.

c 2002 Steven Riddle

Yes, you can see bristling from the edges all of the imperfections; nevertheless, the central image is intriguing. For the central image always struck me as an instance of God's handwriting--clues for those looking that ultimately, when you had explained everything, there would remain things that could not be explained. Just as Gödel's theorem hints at a larger realtiy, so too this image.

For those who don't know, Gödel's theorem proves mathematically that within any closed system there are theorems that can be proposed but cannot be proven by the elements of the system. Ultimately, that there are things that simply cannot be known. It is a daring, intriguing, and fascinating theorem. Every time I think about it or study it, it becomes more and more suggestive. Some have posited it as a "proof" of faith or of God. It is nothing of the sort, of course, although it hints at a metasystem in which all closed systems operate, and thus an operation of an ultimately open system. But, that is perhaps drawing too much even from such a rich stream.

Another Very Old Poem

Here's another from the archives:

She Encounters Herself Unclothed

Wishing she could pull
the dew up into a
cloak, like the moon
does, she stoops on
the bank to touch
the mirror, and perhaps
disturb the eyes that
watch from above.

c2002 Steven Riddle

from "Monet at Giverny"
Steven Riddle

June 1922
The end
of my stay, my art,
my canvasses, my footbridge,
the waterlilies will be here
when I cannot see them.
Just now they fade from my sight,
dimming against the water.
I think it is sunset.

My house is cold,
a rose in frost with no door.
I am alone,
the evening is more red than sunset,
I stand at the center of a flower
opening dew-laden petals.
It is morning.

c 2002 Steven Riddle

Return to Poetry

I know I said I would cease, but Dylan's wonderful post this weekend caused me to reconsider (read: inspired me to continue). The following poem needs work--as does everything placed here so far, but I hope that you will enjoy it.

God's Storm
Steven Riddle

God storms in me--
the brightest sun
and sky deepest
Caribbean--
cotton puff pure
white clouds and breeze
that breathes the scent
of fresh-mown grass;
noises of children
in yards as deep
as the sea and
taste of cool tea
on a shaded
porch with neighbors
out walking by
remembering
this once to raise
a greeting hand
and smile.

In me God rages
waiting in the womb
unborn and kicking
caught in fowlers nets
a macaw calling
a single crystal
bell so clear and loud
calling first to me
and then to all who
will hear, "Come to me
all who bear heavy
burdens and cry out;
Come to me thirsty
for living water
and see what I can
give you. Come to me
and quietly rage--fight
the war of flowers
and of dew. Come you
who know the world so
well, and you who know
yourselves. Rage with me
the rage of healing
and hope, the anger
of joy and repose,
the wrath of turtle
doves and lambs."

God strikes me
compassion,
sympathy,
concern and
deep caring
I must take
and others
strike to make
them simple,
whole and one.
He tells me
"Feed my sheep."
And I say,
"Love me, Lord."
As at my
command, He
does.

c 2002 Steven Riddle

Two Poems

Okay, these are the last for a while. One does not wish to wear out one's welcome and inundating a captive audience is the best way to do so. So far, everyone has been very polite--nary a jeer or a hiss from the audience, and I thank you. But I've selected two shorter and much lighter poems, and I thank you for being a polite and respectful audience.

Angel Head
I close my eyes and
see a black bowl
filled with golden stars.
A head from a painting--
An angel head
Dali's momentary genius.
And I wonder
at the meaningless meaning
I find for it.
A bowl of black and gold
black and gold.

c 2002 Steven Riddle

The following is a variation on a haiku suggested by American poets that found the 5-7-5 syllabification too expansive. In this case they suggested the much tighter compression of 3-5-3. I have further varied it by my own addition of a 3 syllable line. This is a very small sketch of an incident occuring as we were returning across the bridge from Merritt Island (Cape Canaveral's location) across the Indian River to the mainland.

Haiku

Eighteen inch
triangular fin
smooth surface
(summer light)

c2002 Steven Riddle

On the anniversary of such a somber ocassion, there is little to say that does not border on the mawkish or the idiotic. This, in fact, will be all that I say on the matter--other than the prayers that I offer for all.

I wrote the following poem after my mother died and I dedicate it respectfully to all of those who have been left behind.

Orpheus
Steven Riddle
for my mother

In green finery she walks the hallowed floor
(the clipping of her slippers on the wood
throws me off guard) and moves to the door
that leads to the hall where the glass-cased
Bastille key fills the wall (more or less)
and onward without a word into the blue
ballroom with chairs along the wall as though just
moments ago cleared for the first dance.
She neither glances back nor moves her head,
but glides on quietly, assured of her step--
her destination--the boxwood hedge--she leads
me and seems to know I follow, though how
I cannot say. Through the wrought-iron gate,
she scuffs the brownstones of the path
as she moves to the center, there to wait
for me. Still she does not face me, but I know
her for one who lost me years ago as she went
on and I was left behind. So now I go
through the gate and up the garden path,
praying as I do that she does not look back.
And then a glance, a moment's lapse, a laugh
(or is it a cry?) breaks the quiet and
as a storm surge tears the sand from the beach
I am pulled from the path-gone-out of her reach.
Pulled back, bereft of this promised paradise,
I now know what it is to be Eurydice.

c2002 Steven Riddle

I have thought long and hard before deciding to take this step. And the conclusion of my thought is that I have determined to try to share some of my own poetic endeavors from time to time. The poetry market seems mostly closed--I've tried time and again to break in, but other than little magazines, no one is really taking anything from any new voice. Or, perhaps, (and believe me this reality has hit home often) my poetry really doesn't deserve publication. That's hard for me to believe, particularly when I look at some of the stuff that does make its way into the paying market. Surely there is good stuff, and just as surely there is stuff that amounts to the emperor's new clothes. People have been told that it is good, and it is new, and that has been accepted. Whatever the reality, I humbly offer this poem for your delectation and delight (please keep any horror and repugnance to yourself--some things are best savored alone). And please pardon me if this seems too bold a step.

Completion: A Valediction
Steven Riddle
for Joyce M

The thousand paper cranes have been folded.
The day has come to set them to their flight.
As we pause to ponder, something like dread
threatens to consume us, as though we might
not be able to fold these birds again.
Our touch will be gone, the paper too coarse,
the folds too hard, our hearts too sad. But when
we think of our first efforts, and rehearse
our first completed crane, we see the hands
that guided us, feel their touch, and know that
they will show us how to shape and mold and
make new figures even at a distance. What
we thought would be the end, becomes the start
of even greater paper-folding art.

c. 2002 Steven Riddle