Ikebana Workshop

Friday, April 6, 2012


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.  Her best 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 she joins 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.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, I love the bit about lifting the chin--and everything else too.

Serena said...

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.

Harvee said...

Very nice. I enjoyhed the poem together with the photo.

Melissa Sarno said...

This is really beautiful. I like to be with your words :)

patti.mallett_pp said...

Yes, I like to be with Beth's words, too, Melissa. Anywhere. Anytime.

This is lovely food for thought.

@parridhlantern said...

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

Elizabeth said...

" Beauty being in

The bend of things and in the wide
Omnivorous eye
Of a bloom."

Just beautiful.

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