Saturday, May 7, 2011

Helix #1

an arthritic finger
a quonset hut hulking in January drizzle 

a teardrop tattoo

a chowder shack in Bodega Bay
a misty November afternoon spilling over with gulls 

a flagstone walkway

a cigarette butt in a puddle outside the hospital 

you are older
a coil of barbed wire breaks thru pasture snow

a dish of paella in Baltimore
it was January you should have been elsewhere 

a peony blooming next to concrete steps

a pair of chipped bifocals a pair of frayed black sandals 

a kestrel preening in the willow
a star tattoo a daytime moon

a purple cyclamen on a San Francisco patio 

a string quartet a picnic dinner on the lawn
an archtop guitar

a game of croquet a storm approaching from the south 

a Council, Idaho July 4th parade
a dogwood blooming like laughter

a cottonwood’s seedpods exploding amidst May’s bees 

a future loaded with blanks
where have you been all this time


Jack Hayes
© 2010

2 comments:

  1. Kaleidoscopic, John! I'm translating a lot of Cendrars at the moment and this puts me in mind of his freewheeling mixture of literal description and hallucinatory imagery.

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  2. Hi Dick: Thanks! I love Cendrars' work & am starting to post my translations of 19 Elastic Poems (made these in the 90s) on the RFBanjo blog. I liked the Cendrars' translations of yours I saw very much, & am looking forward to more.

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