Poem for Joanna

how can i tell of my silence      with words?

(a radio telescope

a gaunt contraption of sheds

& very many grids of cable  

     imagine a telescope dish

the diameter of the earth

imagine probing the furthest areas of the universe)

energy

as in quasars        suns         within molecules

& my sun !

my ENERGY

bursts

a crescendo

       is a quasar

a thing of legend

but quietly goes the air

my breath

my strokes of hand

mushrooms in dank places

lightened by dawn

Joanna has never heard the sonic hiss

there is a smell of breakfast

a stream leaping down stones

which among the grasses

is the ancient one...?

keeper of grass legend

or among water

which drop?

Joanna

      your legs are beautifully long

      but you are too big for Rodin...

come at me...

i say you are too big

but Rodin is dead anyhow

perhaps of lesser legged women

(i talk thus when i am tired

     or i am enigmatic...

        later I will try to find heron imagery

my verse will walk on stilts

my arm on white stains black

i write my blackness with light

were i no poet

an astronomer i'd be

& I would hunt

the quark

Dick Russell

                                        First published in Wolfprints, 1971

 At Sunset

There's work 

and then there's

poetry

There's work to make a home

takes daylight labor to please household gods

When birds sing at sunset

Persephone is near

She drives the fuse that impels pea flowers

ever higher

As dusk falls and bedtime slippers hit the floor

Athena's owl hunts in long shadows from the sun

Refreshed memories rekindle feeling

Fast fading fiery ribbons cloud the sky

weighed down by descending night

Twilight lingers longer a few days more

bathing in the fragrance of cool evening scents

then Summer will be here

and Spring

will fade away

again.

  Dick Russell

       (C) 

June 19th 2022