From Colville Street To Alder Street Poem by Denis Mair

From Colville Street To Alder Street

Rating: 5.0


I'm a moth drawn to a glow about to fade
Where is that cherishing fire still tended?
At crossings where nobody watches
Someone may be lighting up at any time
I hate to see so much charisma wasted
I lurk in traffic, along the sidewalks
I try to glimpse those transfigured faces
My detector misses intermittent beams
I edge past long skirts of someone's depression
I too have hidden deposits, but easy to drive by
For drilling to the quick, what could be better than kisses?
What wellhead pumps up more fuel than a wounded heart?
When a certain fly-fisher stops at her roadside haunt
I identify with dark water at the stream's bend
When she sits in the warm nearness of a horse barn
I blow my nose and hope it sounds like whickering
I'm impressed with the range she ranges over
Walla Walla with an overlay of sacred geography
The valley of the shadow of death down Colville Street
While walking to work she caused me to notice peaks
Right here in town, and one of them is Gethsemane
That long skirt she sewed from motley velvet scraps
Tolls like a silent bell on her cold morning walks...
What with all her books on whales, rats, and locusts
Her head becomes an ark for creatures large and small
Who offer a chorus of advice about new recipes
Her femininity is well known to local auctioneers
Reckoned as a force for fashioning charity wreaths
Here's to throwing out pills that do no good!
I'll drink her health with St. John's Wort tea
To see her in restless kaleidoscopic dreams

Monday, February 8, 2016
Topic(s) of this poem: longing
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
(- about a woman whose estimable qualities loomed large in my mind while I was 'visiting poet' in eastern Washington) The muse who prompted this poem is soooo different from me. She grew up in a rural area and never spent time in a big city. I have travelled to many countries and lived in big cities. She is an evangelical Christian, and I am sort of a Buddhist. She did not go away to a four-year college, and I am a perpetual student. I was invited to her town for a poetry festival held by a local bookstore. We became friends and exchanged many letters over the years. The differences in outlook actually lent spice to our correspondence.// On occasion I have imbibed St. John's wort as an oneirifacient, but only in small amounts.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Denis Mair 03 March 2020

A PoemHunter friend tried to post a comment here, but the comment-posting function was spotty that day. She sent her comment to my Inbox, as follows: " It’s interesting that you learned to appreciate someone so very different from yourself. It’s an enriching experience to be able to connect with someone despite such differences."

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Bharati Nayak 07 January 2020

Through your words I can see a beautiful and charismatic lady walking along the street of Walla Walla. She has some mystic aura around her that can attract a stranger from a far off land. A lovely poem, thanks for sharing.

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Daniel Brick 23 February 2016

Your poem gives this woman a new residence in my imagination, but her soul is so l-a-r-g-e if mine were superimposed on hers, the edges of hers would fan out like a nimbus. (*) You dont say in the text you were a visiting poet: you dont need too, this praise-song sings as only a poet can, transforming the sensual into the spiritual. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say: you find the sensual and the spiritual ideally meshed in her being. That's what I am taking with me. (*) That's paraphrased from Bergman's Persona. It fit your theme so well.

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