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One Heart, Last Seen

in Georgia. It had
the shape of a sassafras root
clutched wann in a grubby hand;
a bucketful of catawba worms
wreathed in a slithering mass
is how it felt;
it could hold about as much
as crayfish seines;
the sound of it was
June bugs on thin strings,
and it was fragile, too, pellucid
as the web of the writing spider
that scratched doomed names
from the holly to the front lawn swings.

Magnolia

I grew by
  Magnolia, lovely
as skin; in summer
it was heavened
in stars, green sky;
winter never
dimmed its shining.
When we moved,
stronger veins
were silent in the clay.

Haven't I
lived by others,
twined arms, limbs
in rooted shelters,
known the whelms
of deeper skin?
Why grow
   Magnolia, lovely,
draining flavor
from all that blossoms?

Seattle Spring

The star magnolia's bloomed and gone.
The chestnuts have unwrapped
their green candles,
the lindens their hearts of green.
Plum blossoms hang from boughs
like excess lace;
fading tulips tip their cups
like woozy wedding guests,
and wait.
This is only April;
it will go on and on, —
more greening, more blooming
and pigeons preening;
it will be one build-up after another,
with no arrival at fullness
and declamation
in sight.
Through July,
it will be Spring,
alert and verdant, not quite cold,
but far from warm—like a bridesmaid deferring
to the bride.
The sun won't hit
its stride till August;
in two weeks the brush will turn to sage
and the first yellow leaf will startle,
it falls so soon.
But Summer's only started!
you exclaim, and what
were all those green months for,
if not to usher in a haze
of warm, climactic lushness?
Ah, the Seattle Spring is slow
and green, beautiful as no other,
but cool as a soul
that does not give way to passion gladly, —
or almost too late.

An Airletter from Elizabeth Bishop

It was three months travelling from Ouro preto,
Brazil to Seattle, and that was puzzling enough,
but how it looked! crumpled and tom,
as though it had made its way through deep
jungle stuck to the sole of the postman's sandal.

I imagine it thus: he noticed the airletter
flapping (this down-at-the-heel winged Mercury)
and thought to smooth it out across his belly,
snagging three holes down its center
on the metal tooth ofhis belt buckle, neat
as a hooked fish.

                         He took it home
to flatten overnight between the stones
his wife used for grinding corn—where two
of its corners were rasped and beaten
into the evening tortillas.

                                     Next day, as
the postman saw the airletter flying
across the yard with sparring roosters,
he wondered, Now what, mail it or not?
and placed it in the family Bible
for safekeeping (awaiting guidance).

Two months later, when his third child was born
and the event recorded in the holy pages,
the airletter fluttered out. (Like the wan-
dering Jew, survival lay in moving on).
The typed address was still good.

The postman took it to the correio
and. crossing himself. stuck it inside
a mail sack bound by rail for Rio.
A week latet, the airlettet was bundled
onto a Boeing jet—a horse of home
that knew its way back.

                                 It travelled
rather quickly. then, to the mailbox
at my door. It looked as used as sin.
Carefully I slit the remaining edges
of flimsy, pale air paper.

                                 Opened, it
appeared to be a jungle primitive's
idea of a kindergartner's snowflake.
Of the tighdy typed, margin-to-margin words,
one in six was missing or corrupt—
probably those she'd pondered longest.

On the Way to Dharamsala

Two-thirds through an 18-hour trip
by dusty, rickety bus—
past Chandigarh and Mandi,
before we ascend
to the Kangra Valley—
we make another curl
in the tattered roadway
and come upon a sudden
opening in the hills.

                           There
the Himalayas stand, a crowd
of jagged slabs of ice and snow,
like a wall upon the sky.

                                    High;
too high forme to climb—
but it is my home
and I am going there.
Not this day, this lifetime.
But in that distance.

Dharamsala

This, too, is India—
a Tibetan village transposed
yak load by yak load
across time and glaciers;
refuge of the Dalai Lama.

Here, on the dirt road
winding past die lamasery,
prayer flags snap
like curtains in the wind,
sending Om Mane Padme Hum
around the globe,

and the chants of monks
unfold in layered tones,
the chords repeating
down mile-high mountains,
like the green declensions
of terraced slopes.

We wa1k along a road no wider
than a ledge in space;
cloud-thrown patterns
pace the valley below.
You have become an actor
in a dream I cannot place.

The Dhaula Dhar, in eternal snow,
stands halfway up the sky.
Blossoming cherries cast
a net across the depths;
pines and ban oaks lean
like madronas on the bluffs at home.

Was it only yesterday I learned
your face oflove is false?
Prayer flags scribble Om
to the wind. Dry
scree rolls beneath my sandals
and ricochets down cliffs.

Our ascent is frozen here,
as if a bitter avalanche
had filled the road;
and I will climb many terraces
of green sleep, amid snows
as fast as the Dhaula Dhar,

until I reach the wind
where flags intone
Om Mane Padme Hum
and I step out of you,—
and the distant
chasm's closed.

FREDA QUENNEVILLE (1937-1996) was an award-winning poet whose works appeared in over forty magazines including The New Yorker, The Nation, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, and Prairie Schooner.  Born in Georgia, she attended the University of Washington and lived most of her life near Seattle.  Her lyrics were commissioned and performed by the Sacred Earth Singers, the Seattle Women's Ensemble, and the Vancouver Women's Chorus.  Child of the Ocmulgee is her first collection of poetry.

Click here to read Garrick Davis' excellent review:  an introduction to Quenneville's
Child of the Ocmulgee Selected Poems.

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