Ikebana Workshop
For this she has clipped the wings
Of Jane’s tree and bucketed monks head
And stolen rose hips from a mass of vines
On a roadside stretch while her husband
Perpetuated the crime. Beauty being in
The bend of things and in the wide
Omnivorous eye
Of a bloom.
We are to watch for thorns,
She says, and for architecture.
We are to turn the subject back
On itself and lift the object’s chin
And make room for spaces in
Between, and nothing is lovelier
Than the odd one thing, and turgor
Is a word she’d buy, a word she gives away
For free. Herbest friend died this summer,
And in the earthen room
In which we work, there are
Her best friend’s things:
Pods and kenzans and ceramic half moons and the name
Helen, which shejoins with honor
And stem.
We are women working in shadow
And with inversions and toward the faith
She teaches us to have
In the line between the lines
Of stolen hips and wings.
— Beth Kephart, posted as part of the Savvy Verse and Wit National Poetry Month Blog Tour.
6 Comments on Ikebana Workshop, last added: 4/7/2012
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Beautiful, I love the bit about lifting the chin--and everything else too.
OMG, this is got to be one of the most powerful endings to a poem I've read in a while:
"We are women working in shadow
And with inversions and toward the faith
She teaches us to have
In the line between the lines
Of stolen hips and wings."
Thanks for joining the blog tour. I appreciate your kind friendship and dedication to poetry always.
Very nice. I enjoyhed the poem together with the photo.
This is really beautiful. I like to be with your words :)
Yes, I like to be with Beth's words, too, Melissa. Anywhere. Anytime.
This is lovely food for thought.
Yeah I like this, thanks.
A Constant.
The light had away of
painting in the shadows
Labyrinthine corridors
that the mind skirts
with peril. To Borges
Light was a refracted tale.
expelled from some prism
like shotgun pellets, or
trapped a bug glued
in amber. Neither
Was true, time was
the only constant
or prison cell