Poetry

 

 

Bertha Rogers

What You Want To Say

I.

Monkshood
in the morning plot,
its flowers clerics in disguise,
tonsured heads bent,
stemmed faces facing ground.

Thinking what?
—Thinking cold so deep,
thinking winter's sleep.

These bright cowls
transmute drifts,
call for green shrouds.
This herb subsumes spring;
brings ease, aromatic need.

—But you can't forget
the aconite winter,
so influential
your fingers call for crypts.

II.

You want to speak—
manuscript illuminated,
all balm—
spine sewn and strung like a Coptic binding—

So that those who lift your cover
—will hear all clearly—
no gutter secrets,
just words and pictures,
trees, high-grassed, green fields.

You want those notions
to scud like winded clouds,
tear like dogs careering after rabbits
through pastures
—no dens,
no pock-marked, scarred pages
to outsmart hunger.

You want it all open—
and only the rabbits screaming.

—But you can't forget
the aconite winter,
so influential
your fingers call for crypts.

 

When We Were Ghosts, Again

I woke to you, making love to me, and
thought I loved it until I saw the wounds.
Saw your face, skin stretched taut, covert eyes,
heard your drummed words. That was enough.
But you continued, and so I watched you,
the loneliness of arms attempting embrace,
overreaching. I wanted to erase you,
our lost time, glaucous golden leaves below
October trees. But you wouldn't vanish,
wouldn't let me go. At last, heartbroken,
I wedded your lifeless shape, became—
one last time—your bodiless beloved.

 

 

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