Maria Thompson Corley
One of our Readers from the Monday Night POEMS FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP shared these poem of hers. Thank you for your gift, Maria.
"Big Yellow Taxi"
by, Maria Thompson Corley
The world paused as
Notre Dame burned, mourning
its grandeur, crumbling
like shards of spun glass, forgetting
the toppled spires pointed
towards a God they had
long ago dismissed.
Parisians and tourists stood
in solemn worship of stone
and ancient wood.
“Our Lady,” monument to
white male creativity:
though neither, her
damaged beauty left
me bereft as they.
My cathedral burns like
candle wax, each new
ache and wrinkle a
shortening of the
wick, while my fragrance
wafts then dissipates.
Democracy had no
assumed expiration.
Lit by careless
matches, ancient timbers and lofty
towers fall to ash behind a
facade of stone.
Copyright 2019
Shared with permission
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"I am not an Angry Black Woman"
I am not an Angry Black Woman.
I am a live butterfly, impaled by a pin.
I am not an Angry Black Woman.
I am a strapped-in passenger, careening into an approaching train.
I am not an Angry Black Woman.
I am a writhing worm on the sidewalk after rain.
I am not an Angry Black Woman.
I am an Olympic swimmer tethered to a submerged slave ship.
I am not an Angry Black Woman.
But what if I were?
Copyright 2019, Maria Thompson Corley
Shared with permission
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"Escape"
You ran, heeding the
advice of a childhood
friend, lived your
life, brief but abundant,
ethereal glimpses of exotic
visions trailing in your wake:
a distant smile, beckoning like
the dawn; beauties
bored, entitled,
melanated, pale,
swathed, naked;
the scent of fruit,
the sound of thunder.
I ran, seeking places “nigger”
would never replace
my name, fleeing six months
ice and snow, dreaming
of brown-skinned lovers,
trying to dance beyond
your graveyard grasp, your
orange-stained fingers
clutching torrents of rain.
You ran, seeking
a home for your mind, so
“new and queer.”
I ran, finding
a home for my misfit
consciousness within.
Copyright 2016; revised 2019
by Maria Thompson Corley
Shared with permission
Maybe the best measure of a poem is that it gets better the more times it is read. I suppose I will reach a point of saturation with "Notre Dame" like listening to a great song and have to put it away before it becomes a jingo; before it fossilizes in the consciousness like Nelson's and Cline's "Crazy" does on diner jukeboxes. Note; I've renamed the poem "Notre Dame" because I do not hear Joni Mitchell. I hear Gerard Manley Hopkins:
ReplyDeleteThe world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod