Hi all! October got away from me...so here is a November poem. Hope everyone is doing well! <3
WILD ASTERS
In memory of Sylvie Semaan
Driving I-95 this morning, I spot them—
a frill at the edge of the woods, their stars
brightening the deep oak and maple shade—
and I can still see Sylvie that day, heading back to the City,
waving from the rented car stuffed
with her family and the galaxies of asters, blue and white,
we gathered on the bluff above the harbor
(two weeks later, she had called to say
the wildflowers still lit their Manhattan rooms,
and we’d spoken again of that rare, simple day:
the soft late-summer air, clear marine light!)
This morning I see her again
(this time as an image preserved in brine)
as I never saw her in life, this time a vision:
shaven head, alone on a frigid beach, salted edge
of her native Normandy, attuned
to something beyond the gun-metal ocean
frothing white at her feet.
Salt sprays the lenses of her glasses
dries there to a lace of stars, obscuring
this, her borrowed world, but not dimming
the magnitude of the next.
Hi Claire--this is a moving elegy. There is a sense of completeness to it. In the 3rd stanza, I love the 'rare, simple day' and 'clear, marine light' .... In the second stanza, I might change 'rented car stuffed' to 'rented car packed' which rhymes more with asters...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about 'image preserved in brine' which brings to mind a lab animal (sorry!)... I love the lace of stars... and thought maybe 'frothing white at her feet' and the lace image feel a little redundant. Perhaps that stanza could end with gun-metal ocean.
The last stanza is powerful. I wondered about the word 'magnitude' and tried other possibilities -- 'the looming next' or ' the vastness of the next'. Also, re: '(her) borrowed world'.. I get tripped up by pronouns sometimes, and think I might be tempted to write '(our) borrowed world' here. What do others think of this?
Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Claire,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this beautiful, clear remembrance. I too love "rare, simple day" and feel like the poem's straightforwardness beautifully echos that notion - it's not trying to get cute, it's classic and yet original.
I wonder if the first several lines can be compressed a bit to get to the memory. As is, it feels a little like some throat-clearing before the poem really begins.
Driving I-95 this morning, I spot them—
[a frill] at the edge of the woods, their stars
brightening the deep oak and maple shade—
and I [can still] see Sylvie [that day], heading back to the City,
waving from the rented car stuffed...
Like the suggestion about "packed" and agree with the concern about "image preserved in brine." What about simplifying to "This morning I see her / as I never saw her in life:"? Not sure you need to say it's a vision, since you've already said you never saw this in real life. I like Vasiliki's thought about "our" instead of "her," too--"her" hadn't bothered me, but changing it to "our" subtly provides depth and brings us back to the speaker from the opening of the poem in a way that offers closure.
Thank you again!