David Robert Books: The Art of Poetry

Sample Poems by Roberta Senechal de la Roche

Vermillion
It's in the blood from here on out,
from nursery to prison boat,
to gardens cursed with blind flowers again.

She said to keep it close at hand,
keep it tight so you'll be ready.
Spend it when you need to.

I sing only in the shadow of your wings.
Touch me with your secret hands,
remember me in time.

Tribe

We followed the water
as far as it would take us,
which was forever.

Each time we moved,
we were careful to leave
a broken arrowhead in the hearth ashes
to make sure our ghosts could not follow.

Do not remember this.
It is better now.
You can fly,
and your fire is invisible.

No dead will ever shadow you.
No beast will trace your steps.
No unbidden voice will whisper
dread into your nights.

The singing circle, though, is gone,
and now the tracks you make,
you make alone.

Babylon

The scent of lilacs leaning over terraces
can break us all over again,
if we think back.

Silence lies latent in the golden boughs
we hope to find, we who return
to sift through the archeology of desire.

The raven's kiss is on the land,
upon the perennial queen of shade
who comes with pomegranates after winter,

Whose sleep is a history of dust
whose crown of shadows
marks the final fall of flowers.

We danced with bells and snakes,
purified our hands in smoke
but had to leave with words we could not speak.

Winter Light

Maybe you find it late by chance,
a pressed flower in an old book
abbreviated abstract lavender blue
barely real, gesturing thin and frail
adagio lines of a lullaby
you once knew by heart.

What early light could ever breed
such color out of frost's ephemera
sheathed in greening lust
in wild fields rising up
from snow-bound fugue
to entice sweet violence
from tender hands?

Back then, before you had to
before they said you must sit still
and learn the wheel and rock
before you couldn't anymore
before someone near betrayed
your secret heart of rose
to searching blight,

You simply sang the moon and sun,
barefoot even in the mud and dust
laughing triumph to the sky
with shameless grace and wanton innocence
you won the simple trust of birds
and all the pretty angels of this world.

Standing in your crown of ice
now touched with rust from iron days,
this fragment in your hand
this weightless revenant of spring
still radiates transcendence into cold
still maybe whispers to you, stay.

After Ophelia

Anyone who cared to look
could see the bridge was on fire,
especially at night.

We'd gone over it, back and forth
a long time, while I put upon my lips
the way of sourwood blossoms

where a choleric wolf used to cross
where a brindled owl looked for its chance
where we once watched water pass below.

Naming these always makes it worse
and doesn't help any floating thing
waiting to go under and forget.