The Last Wolf- Poem 167
Mary Tallmountain
The last wolf hurried toward me
throught the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the ruby-crowed high rises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless
Passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping
gait
closer the sounds in the deadly
night
through clutter and rubble of quiet
blocks
I hear his voice ascending the
hill
and at last his low whine as he
came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west,
waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
He trotted across the floor
he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered
Yes, I said.
I know what they have done.
This poem is called, “The Last Wolf.” It is by Mary Tallmountain. I choose this poem because I am always interested when someone writes about nature and the animals that must live inside it. This poem was very unique because it combines nature and the grime of the city. It describes a woman who knows this wolf and can understand him. The wolf is the last left of his kind and when the wolf walks into the room where the woman is waiting; she says, “Yes, I know what they have done.” This implies that someone or something has killed the other wolves. The wolf feels incredibly alone and howls out while he is running through the city toward the woman. This woman is the only thing that the wolf has left and he feels compelled to come back to her and express his grief. This poem could be about the destruction of the world and its creatures. It could be a premonition of a time when the cities of the world are overrun by wild life and people no longer appreciate the worlds beauty and kill off all of the wolves in their fight for survival in this new doomed world. This poet uses amazing imagery in describing the crumbling city and the emotion on the wolf’s face. She breaks her poem apart line by line in order to create a more dramatic affect. One word may go on a line. This emphasizes the lines in certain stanzas and creates a ‘body’ to her poem. There is a distinct introduction, of herself and of the wolf, then the body, then the conclusion where she understands the wolfs suffering.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Three Poems
Neglect
R. T. Smith
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking in the woodstove what I will remember of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit? Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye, patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended. What remains is this armload of applewood now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers. Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen, spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone. Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember. Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.
Neglect is a poem by R.T. Smith. This poem’s title is what caught my eye. I was interested to see what it was about. When I started reading the poem I was able to relate the different fruits to people the way the different fruits are handled to the way people treat one another. If one is neglected he will eventually feel worthless and forgotten. The line, “Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart” was a terrific piece of imagery that made the reader identify with the apple tree. This one stanza creates a feeling of lost hope, something that should have been taken care of but since there was neglect it grew to be twisted and black, hard and unforgiving. No longer would the tree create a delicious fruit. It could only be used as firewood now. This particular part reminds me of the neglect of a child. If a child is neglected he will learn to trust no one, to become hard and dark in order to protect himself.
After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning or in the final stage. -- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof. And all that prospered under the sun, the books that opened in the morning and closed at night, and all day turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms and clever faces, and of fields and barns, and of a bowl of eggs, and lying across the piano the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined, everything whispered and sung, all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones. The rain tastes like salt, and rises in the streets like a ruinous tide. We spoke of millions, of billions of years. We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell into the sound hole of the guitar, another onto the unmade bed. And after us, the rain will cease or it will go on falling, even upon itself.
This poem by Connie Wanek is called “After Us.” It is a poem about the rain. The way that it helps living things and the way it silences all other sounds. It speaks of the way the rain keeps everyone inside until it starts to come inside too. It speaks of the darkness of rain, of the way it will continuously fall no matter what. The rain will not stop. It will keep on moving. Weather it is good or bad it still continues. There is no way to stop it and no way to prevent it. You can only protect yourself, and even after that the rain will still fall.
Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone, no one can reach me- At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, that woman I once loved- nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I've heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should h
ave warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago. as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair under a sky of incredible blue, broken - if that is the word for it - by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another.
This poem is called ”Some Clouds” by Steve Kowit. It is about a man who has lost someone that he loves very much. This poem demonstrates loneliness and hurt. The man does not want people to call him now. He does not want to talk about it. He wants to be left alone in the lawn chairs. He wants to be left alone to look at the clouds. The piece of imagery of the clouds represents peace. This peace is to be shared with the dead. There must some sort of grounding. This man’s ground is the sky.
R. T. Smith
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking in the woodstove what I will remember of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit? Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye, patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended. What remains is this armload of applewood now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers. Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen, spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone. Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember. Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.
Neglect is a poem by R.T. Smith. This poem’s title is what caught my eye. I was interested to see what it was about. When I started reading the poem I was able to relate the different fruits to people the way the different fruits are handled to the way people treat one another. If one is neglected he will eventually feel worthless and forgotten. The line, “Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart” was a terrific piece of imagery that made the reader identify with the apple tree. This one stanza creates a feeling of lost hope, something that should have been taken care of but since there was neglect it grew to be twisted and black, hard and unforgiving. No longer would the tree create a delicious fruit. It could only be used as firewood now. This particular part reminds me of the neglect of a child. If a child is neglected he will learn to trust no one, to become hard and dark in order to protect himself.
After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning or in the final stage. -- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof. And all that prospered under the sun, the books that opened in the morning and closed at night, and all day turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms and clever faces, and of fields and barns, and of a bowl of eggs, and lying across the piano the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined, everything whispered and sung, all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones. The rain tastes like salt, and rises in the streets like a ruinous tide. We spoke of millions, of billions of years. We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell into the sound hole of the guitar, another onto the unmade bed. And after us, the rain will cease or it will go on falling, even upon itself.
This poem by Connie Wanek is called “After Us.” It is a poem about the rain. The way that it helps living things and the way it silences all other sounds. It speaks of the way the rain keeps everyone inside until it starts to come inside too. It speaks of the darkness of rain, of the way it will continuously fall no matter what. The rain will not stop. It will keep on moving. Weather it is good or bad it still continues. There is no way to stop it and no way to prevent it. You can only protect yourself, and even after that the rain will still fall.
Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone, no one can reach me- At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, that woman I once loved- nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I've heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should h
ave warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago. as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair under a sky of incredible blue, broken - if that is the word for it - by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another.
This poem is called ”Some Clouds” by Steve Kowit. It is about a man who has lost someone that he loves very much. This poem demonstrates loneliness and hurt. The man does not want people to call him now. He does not want to talk about it. He wants to be left alone in the lawn chairs. He wants to be left alone to look at the clouds. The piece of imagery of the clouds represents peace. This peace is to be shared with the dead. There must some sort of grounding. This man’s ground is the sky.
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