clockwork

Green sunlight falls in a stretched-out grid on the floor:

the blooming of a new summer, and 
it was in the dying days of last summer

that you happened.

Across the ocean, perhaps your world is blushing green, too, but I imagine

that the pink-white teardrop blossoms fall not to sidewalks, but to rivers,

in a carpet cleaved by sunburnt punts.

I used to measure out the never-narrowing space--
between there and here--
by the intervals on my wristwatch.

A moment ago, I discovered that I am too used to sidewalks

to remember how many tablespoonfuls of time stretch between us.

Here my back is to you, and the sun is falling.

I know, at least, that it has already fallen where you are

and this might make me feel better.

But I’m not sure if it does or not.

misplaced

I dreamt of cobblestones and woke up with a sore neck.

These days, I am constantly waking to find myself

assaulted by grating inconveniences.

           

            The desk is too low, or else my chair too high,

            for me to cross one leg over another.

            The handle on my hot teacup is too small

            for three fingers, and too large for two.

            And seatbelts are always ignoring my shoulder

            to chafe at my neck.

Here it is: I no longer fit in the life that was mine.

I am conscious of my own breathing

and now the breathing is drudgery.

eponymous

Virginia

Is a name invented for a

New land in a New World, and named for her:

The Tudor Rose.

Power made untouchable through purity.

Elegance, I think, and composed charm,

And perhaps the well-mannered ease of the Old South.

Ginger,

by contrast,

is an ugly root: bulbous and pungent

And good for nausea, apparently.

But it can also mean mettle—“sass,” some might say.

Not quite brazen. Cheeky, perhaps, or spirited:

Leavening conversation with a sprinkling of spice.

I am never sure which one I am

or which one I want to be. 

(assignment: write a poem about your name.)

sinking city

Venice

by day is bright and cramped. The crowd

of sweaty tourists seeps through tangled streets, loud

and greedy. Sundown, and they are gone, by train or boat.

They leave their rubbish and refuse. It floats

in the canals and blankets the flagstone streets.

At night,

San Marco is quiet and cool.

Forgotten laundry flutters, and moonlight pools

on the wavering water. Empty gondolas thud

against each other, and out of the mud

under bridges, rats surface to see the stars.

(assignment: constrained syllables. compare the corresponding lines in each stanza.)

con estasi soave

I think I was made for music—

            that, coiled around my bones and

            clenched in my muscles, are

                        melodies

            taut and tense.

I think I was made for music. but

I can’t be sure.

I am silent, static.

until you

cradle me to your shoulder, and

press me to your cheek, and

lift your bow to hover above my veins—taut, tense—

a breath.

then a slippery scrape: like rosined horsehair over bright strings

and

music

quivers through my blood vessels. back again, and

vibrato thrums over my skin; again, and I am

surging, swelling, soaring.

I am static and silent

but you make me sing.

the title: a musical notation; italian for "with gentle ecstasy."

Gone

(assignment: write about something you’ve never experienced.)

My tongue feels too big for my mouth, and

Someone else’s fingers prod

My numb lips

Coasters

Where are the coasters? I forgot to use one

I press the glass to my face, but the condensation

Is long since gone I exhale

and swipe my tongue through the film of fog

Fingerprints! No matter

The liquid will be warm, but it is brown

and I think will burn the itch in my throat

My lips buzz

Has gravity always been down?

On Facing The Reality of Leaving

As the tradition goes, I’m feeling the most inspired to blog when I have the least time to do it and other needs are far more immediately pressing. Exactly twenty-four hours from right now (3:41 PM), I will be pushing my bicycle out of the Vines’s bike shed and up the gravel slope that leads to the driveway, then whooshing down the hill and pedaling to Norham Gardens for my C.S. Lewis tutorial. And, as of right now (3:44 PM), I have not a single original word written on my essay.

For the past few weeks, it’s been difficult to focus on academics—even to focus on enjoying Britain, England, Oxford, and the Vines—because I feel crushed under the pressing weight of everything I’m about to lose. Because, twenty-four hours and two weeks from right now (3:47 PM), I will, geographically, be somewhere over the Atlantic, but more significantly, flying away from Oxford. Everything tells me that the short-term nature of my time here should have sharpened its sweetness, and perhaps it has; perhaps, if my stay were more permanent, I soon would grow indifferent to the narrow little cobblestoned alleyways and the charming post boxes and the weathered spires of the colleges and churches. Perhaps I would tire of everything (huge paned windows with sills wide enough to sit on, leather couches to sit in and not on, and, beyond words I am capable of forming, the people) about the Vines. Perhaps. I doubt it.

It seems impossible for me to focus on C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare and, yes, even you, Jane Austen when I don’t know when (or even, heaven forbid, if) I’ll ever see Sarah, or Hannah, or Jonathan again. Sarah and I went to a Christmas crafts fair at our little church on Friday night and, in the midst of stitching felt flowers and birds, a lady, noting our non-English accents, asked where we were from. “Arkansas, I said, “in the South,” while Sarah answered, “Canada, actually—Ontario.” The woman laughed. “Practically opposite ends, then!” She didn’t mean any harm, and she didn’t do any, but she did probe (unknowingly) an already-aching hurt.

Considering that—to my knowledge—nearly everyone who reads this blog is at home in America, this will not be a pleasant post to read. All I can say is that I’m sorry for my gratuitous whining about leaving, but please note that my sadness is because of the leaving Oxford, not because of the coming home. Loving England hasn’t lessened my love for America. Perhaps, in the aforementioned theoretical situation in which I came to England permanently, and my return to America wasn't a sure thing, secured in a pre-booked flight, I would long for America in the same way I long for Oxford even before I’ve left it. And it isn’t precisely that I don’t want to fly home for family and friends and Christmas two weeks from tomorrow; it’s that I know I can never, ever come back.

Oh, certainly, with the time and money, I can book a flight to Heathrow, pop on the Tube and step off at the Oxford City Centre any time I please. But I can never enter this moment again. This semester is, I think, best explained when encapsulated into a single moment. I can have a drink in the Eagle and Child or go see Wycliffe Hall or, yes, go back to the Vines, but the moment will have passed—the dear old house I want to call “mine” will belong to new students, and even I will be different. I know that even I, by then, will have changed, and it will be normal and even healthy that I will not love Oxford and the Vines in the same way that I do now. Logically, I know this. But I’m terrified for this moment to end, and I know I’m helpless to stop it from ending. I want to make the most of the moment before it slips past. I want to gorge myself on Oxford. I want to wander down High Street looking up at the stars and ride the bus into town alone, lights flashing by outside my window, and I want to play the card games I haven’t made the time to play and I want to have a tremendous Christmas carol sing-a-long around the Vines keyboard; I want to drink PG Tips with milk and sugar in one of the good mugs and talk about feminism or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or political philosophy; I want to love purely and without waste in the time I have left.  

How can I possibly write about the symbol of the veil in Till We Have Faces when I feel so overcome by the need to not waste the last of my Oxford moment?

Current time: 4:41 PM. Twenty-three hours until tutorial.

Fifteen days until home.