WEBVTT

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I would like to read the
title poem of my book--

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The Need to Hold Still.

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Winter weeds, survivors
of a golden age,

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take over the open land.

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Pale armies redressing
the balance.

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Again, we live in
a time of fasting,

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burlap cassocks,
monks on their knees,

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bells tolling in an empty sky.

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Among the thin, the trampled
on, the inarticulate

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clothed in drafts, and
rooted in shocked Earth,

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which remembers nothing,
fields and fields of them.

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Teasel, yarrow, goldenrod,
wheat, bedstraw,

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Queen Anne's lace,
dropseed, love grass,

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plain, strong names--

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bread and water.

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A woman coming in
from a walk notices

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how drab her hair has become.

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That gray and brown are
colors she disappears into.

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That her body has stopped
asking for anything except calm.

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When she brings
them into the house

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and shortens them
for the vase, their

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stems break like
old bones, clean.

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No holding on, no bitter
odor, no last drop of juice.

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Hers, as long as she wants them.

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Their freedom from either/or
will outlast hers every time.

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The dignity of form after
seduction and betrayal

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by color.

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The heads separate but held
together by an old design

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no one has thought to question.

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The open pods that have
given and given again,

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dullness of straw which
underlies the rose,

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the grape, the kiss.

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The narrow leaf blades
shape of the body.

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The fine stems,
earliest brushstrokes,

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lines in the rock, on
the wall, the page.

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