This week's Poet of the People is Susan Finch Stevens. I first met Susan when Kwami Dawes resided in South Carolina and ran the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. She is a gifted poet and generous with her time and energy.
Her leadership as president of the Poet Society of South Carolina drew me back into the organization when I was disillusioned with its leadership and direction. Susan Finch Stevens is one of the gracious, kind and skillful poets that the Carolina coast is known for.
Just Sayin’
with a nod to William Carlos Williams
I forget eggs boiling on the stove
when scores of cedar waxwings
begin their yearly ravishing
of hollies out front. I know full well
by midday all berries will be gone,
plucked from the evergreens
like last December’s ornaments
once the new year rolled around.
Tomorrow I’ll miss the yaupon’s
red adornments, the dahoon’s
crimson spangle, but today I delight
in gluttony, the riotous ecstasy
of waxwings more akin to Bacchus
than Icarus. I envy the drunken
throng’s frenzy as they plump
their bellies full, their habit
of choosing the tipsy dizziness
of overripe fruit over the dizziness
of attaining new and solitary heights.
Today I relish the marauders’ trills,
the sleek beauty of their black masks,
and the waxy red tips of their wings.
I take delight in tails edged with a yellow
somewhere between the sun’s bright heat
and the dull yolks of the overcooked eggs,
which I will discard this once without remorse.
I ask no one for forgiveness
when I take instead from the fridge
the bright berries I suddenly crave.
They are delicious, so sweet and so cold.
Sea-girls
Maybe the dark cursor of a boat moving
along the horizon at the bottom
of the sky’s bright screen
has caught the attention of two girls
heart-deep in the Caribbean Sea.
Or perhaps they see frigate birds
at long last returning to land.
From my dry vantage point
with these old eyes,
I see nothing beyond the pair
but unfathomable shades of blue.
A rogue wave sends the two reeling,
heads thrown back in raucous laughter
drowned from my hearing
by the salt-white noise of the sea.
Footing regained, they link arms,
each to each, to brace themselves
against another rush of water
clear enough for them to see
the shell-pink of their summer pedicures.
Clear enough for me to see legs and feet changed now
into sea tentacles by the smoke and mirrors
of water and light.
Apples for Athena
for Hope
Athena desired the golden apple
meant for the fairest goddess of all,
but Paris gave Aphrodite the prize
in exchange for the hand of Helen
whose face would launch a thousand ships
and lead to a horse of wood and deceit.
But enough about that!
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that apple or that horse.
I don’t mean to tell you today
about that Athena, but about
the Athena here in this barn
where I’ve brought my granddaughter
and her offering of apples.
This Athena would surely shun
the golden one, preferring instead
the succulent fruit to which she now
lowers her head. The mare works
her long jaws, rolling an apple
from side to side until a crunch
sweetens her mouth and even her breath,
which is already sweet with the ghost of hay.
I know this because I am standing here
close enough to feel the warmth emerge
from her enormous lungs.
They are as big as angel wings.
No, wrong mythology.
They are as big as aeon wings
or the wings of Nike, goddess of victory,
who was close enough to that other Athena
for the two to become, in the minds
of many, melded into a single deity.
Just as this Athena, who now takes
a silver snaffle into her mouth,
becomes one with my granddaughter
Hope, mounted and ready to gallop—
if not to Mount Olympus, at least
to her own version of paradise.
Scoliosis
My shadow stretches impossibly long and straight across my childhood
yard in the slant of late day sun. I am tiny and mighty with my towel cape
and that dark immensity emanating from my small feet. My shadow
is formidable, but
already my spine
is curving, refusing
its stature, pulling one
shoulder to hip, a body part-
ly bent on being closer to
the sticker-spiked ground,
a tension of opposites
embodied as I grow
taller and shorter
at once.
Death’s Door
Four catbirds in as many days
propel themselves full force
into the clear deception
of our front door’s glass pane.
Shadow-grey, darker skullcaps,
the birds arrive at the threshold
as though dressed in self-mourning.
One by one, I bury them in the yard
amidst the remains of hamsters and fish
and other small creatures who have died
in this place where we live. The dogs
are elsewhere. The dachshund’s bones
well settled beneath oaks in a beloved
country spot, his tombstone the arc
of his half-buried dish. The mutt’s
divided ashes scattered there in part
and also a stone’s throw away
in the plaid currents of a brackish creek.
The cremated spaniels, who never met
in life, wait patiently in death to be
unleashed together on the beach
where they both romped.
The Weimaraner, ash-grey in life,
joins me in this new ritual of burying birds.
By the third day, the dog knows the routine
and noses a covering of dirt and dead
leaves onto the lifeless form I drop
into the ground’s yawning furrow.
I hang an ornament on the door,
not in mourning, but in hope of exposing
the skulduggery of autumn light and glass.
But on the fourth day,
the dreaded thud once more.
That night we talk of the birds
but avoid all mention of omens.
Instead we speak of what we could buy:
perhaps a solid door to block all light
and reflection as though we might
put an end to this grave trickery.
BIO:
Susan Finch Stevens’ poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Connecticut River Review, One, Kakalak, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: South Carolina. Her chapbook Lettered Bones was selected as a winner in the South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Competition. She is a past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and served many years as the society’s recording secretary. She has been a featured reader in Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry Reading Series, both individually and as a member of Richard Garcia’s Long Table Poets. She served as poet-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Susan lives on the Isle of Palms, SC with her husband David and their mischievous Weimaraner Maisie.