In a Monsoon of Gratitude

Just when one fears one’s writing days
are done, one finds, in Emeritus Hall,
for free, Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases,
Grenville Kleiser, fifteenth edition, 1917.
In the grip of attention, with a glow of
enthusiasm, a grasp of comprehension,
I was piqued. His torpid ideas awake
again in my own pen; in quest of something
to amuse (impervious to the lessons of
experience) I took the good day from
the hands of God as a perfect gift.
A delicious throng of sensations affected
an ironic incredulity—an air of inimitable,
scrutinizing, superb impertinence.
An almost riotous prodigality of energy.
All the world was flooded with a soft
golden light. Style comes, if at all, like
the bloom upon fruit. Swift as the panther
in triumph, streaming tears like pearl
drops from a flint, sudden a thought
came like a full-blown rose. In fact,
talking and thinking became like an
open page in a monthly magazine.
The excitement spread like a piquant
and agreeable odor. The day stunned
me like light upon some wizard way.
The ideas succeeded each other like
a dynasty of kings, and yet worthless
as the conjuror’s gold. Yielding like
melted snow, untamable as flies.
Slowly, like the creeping rust that
spreads insidious, had estrangement
come. Art flounders like a huge conger-
eel in an ocean of dingy morality.
Dimly foreshadowed on the horizon,
ambition shattered into fragments.
The pendulous eyelids of old age,
the scars of rancor and remorse,
the shafts of ridicule, the arrogance
of youth, spread like wildfire, sped
like mechanical toys guided by manikins.
The silence grew stolid.
Weak and frail like the vapor
of a vale, upcast like foam upon
the effacing tide, we retraced our
steps like faithless hounds
(squirrel-in-the-cage kind of movement).

darkroom ode

let me revisit that dim liquid
womb inside the park
at Duboce Triangle
swimming in ritual
of minerals & rectangles
papers, metal clips, sequences
wristwatches jeweled
with minute illuminated signs
where the lost patient human
shapes of love appeared
to me bequeathing
their slow clarities
as even enclosed
within a grand city
I soaked in silences
& solitude
until at last I burned
with the precision of an angel

Kathleen Winter is the author of Transformer, I will not kick my friends, and Nostalgia for the Criminal Past. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, New Statesman, The Adroit Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Yale Review. Awards include the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Prize, Ralph Johnston Fellowship, and Poetry Society of America The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award. Kathleen lives in northern California and is an associate editor with 32 Poems.