 | Poems
by
Charlene Baldridge
©2002 | | | In the Dark Places Before Dawn
In the dark places before dawn
I write poems,
frame photographic images,
climb ladders to hang draperies
made of costume fragments,
bits of lace, brocade and buttons.
In my pocket there is a bound book
that contains all the sad poems
I have never written.
In this book, I read of kisses and crochet,
of loneliness and longing.
"I would love to read to you from my book,"
I tell a would-be lover when he asks,
"but these poems are all about remembering
and I don't know whose memories they are."
These words at 4 a.m. are
whispered by others who insist
they be written on ephemera
before I turn the page again,
before I learn to breathe and
become aware that I am alive in an other place
where each conscious thought
becomes the slayer of those who clamor
to trespass the edge of waking. | | | As I Live and Breathe
(for Dana Staats)
While prospective clientele tend their gardens on a crisp fall day,
the artist sits in a gallery,
cheek-by-jowl with his prize-winning works.
He dials me up cross-country
to tell me of the front-page article in the local rag,
about him and the mid-life career that step-by-step explodes,
with him and his paints in rapturous pursuit.
We discuss the light as it applies to art and life,
the lusty spirit of an old woman filled with both,
the tiny point of light atop the ship's mast
in her favorite watercolor,
the advent of new computer technology
in which, someday, machines will claim to possess souls,
and furthermore, allow each of us the capacity
for neuronic immortality.
We need surrender only individuation
and the amorphous husks we donned along the way.
Meanwhile, another friend is raped of his libido,
says the signs of despression's advent were there.
He could have prevented his overwhelming
had he been a little bit more aware.
Dana talks of ocean dreams and tidal waves,
how the only way to prevent being dashed against the city
is to dive deep and stay down.
We need only hold our breath.
What do I miss about you, then?
Is it your mind?
One day I'll reach for a microchip the size of an atom
and know it once again.
And what of your body, its capacious hugs and warmth?
Virtual reality will be mine as well,
affording me a beauty to match your own.
What button do I push to smell a rose,
what button, you?
Oh, now, where did the light go?
What need are brushes, pigment and color?
Eyes to see, hands to touch, arms to hold?
Take away this brave new world!
I prefer the old one, with such flawed creatures in,
even if it means a world in reality bereft of you
and all the others I have loved.
Perhaps together we can sit on the floor of the sea,
devolve to breathing with our gills,
here, where we no longer need to hold our breath. | | Shadows
A tin box fetched from the top shelf
lies an old album with frayed black pages
and a residue of library paste.
A snapshot of mother,
her sister Gertrude,
the year 1918 noted in white ink,
mother's hand.
In the foreground, father,
bent over the shot,
is mere shadow etched in sidewalk,
the attitude of head and shoulders
a precursor of his frailty,
though he was separated from that,
and now I from him,
by decades of darkness and light.
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