☀ Today's Poem: "Late Summer Ode" Olena Kalytiak Davis

Categories: Poems | Poetry Age: 7 until 13 year 14 until 18 year 19 until 30 year 31 until 64 years 65 and older

1 year ago

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May 24, 2023

Look, our little tree has taken root,
presents its fruit: thirty-six or -seven
ombré ways to cherry. Alone (and mute)
in the garden I garden, alone in
the garden, I crawl like a slow fly
over these books, I carry something out-
sized, something heavy and "literary,"
absurd and third, like an “act,” like an overburdened ant,
alone in the garden, I Laevsky
my catalogue (un-)raisonné. I am so
Chekhovian: old sweater over old
underwear, shoddy, woolen, unkempt of
Ukrainian face, legs, hair, in the half-
kept tender-ly un(der) tended garden.
Like this: Like this, all summer, dishabille,
dishabille, at the table, in ruth's chair,
undistracted, able—yet—lacking ac-
tion, thus, driven to distraction: (like this,
like this, I move to-ward: the form of form.)
something something something AND: o! there
's our new wasps' nest— good for one summer
only. All the rest the rest repeating
repeating: the sweet pea: revenant, re-
established shooting its florescence up
my late vacant trellis: REPEATING:
tender still and purple, purple. Some buds
to flower, some to leaf, from shade to sun
and sun to shade in search of a relief
that never comes: in my Vishneviy Sad,
sad, alone, just—holding—on: alea-
tory, asinine, like some old world pass-
erine, perched and panicked. and common.
common, the visitors come, and (to some)
relief, the visitors go, altricial,
they say-sing, sing-said their made up songs:
Michaela came and told her story: I
can't stay in the house now that Grandpa wants
to have sex with me. Now that he can't re-
cognize me. Thinks I'm my dead grandmother
who raised me. She's twenty
seven, and met her boy-friend
online but, shhhhhh, she's already done
with him. She does not get along with
her mother. She says her little sister
is the shit: on fleek, but complains that
her sixth grade graduation eclipsed her
master's celebration. Me and Ruby
and Lyana and I listen. We watch
her whip, we watch her nae nae. Ruby
and Lyana stare at their more immedi-
ate future. Fletcher and his brother
arrive. They brought oysters. But right now,
right away they are hungry, hungry. They
eat the kale salad, the homemade bread,
the peach pie I baked, the Caprese
I made, wash it down with beer, white white,
Rosé, Rosé. They are from Juneau,
New Zealand, and Maine, because Richard's mother
gave him away when she was twenty
six or seven. Thirty or forty years later
he found his family. Now she's dead.
I can't understand a lot of what
'e 'aid: I can't see the resemblance, but,
they are, some version of the same. Ruby's here,
she's fourteen, here to visit her big-faced
bloated father. Ruby's shorts are very short. Her mother
is breaking up with her young
hedge-fund husband—oh wait— no she's not.
Ken was here a time or two, he's very
thoughtful, he brought halibut, he brought
“The Moose,” so then I spent a lot of time
with, yes, again, Cal and Elizabeth.
I whispered this poem to herself. Pre-
cipitate and pragmatical. No.
Anomic and ominous. Yes. Auto-
nymous. Jonathan visited once. He
took an Instagram of the grapefruits'
orange squeezed rounds repeating round the pink
cutting board. Vodka. Vodka. Although we
hung out last summer, and I had wanted
to hang out more, (I did, it's true, / "he liked
you, then he changed his mind") (and couldn't get
it up) he now he lives with a pretty young
fat life coach and I was, i admit, a little bored.
Then Kary came. She's my Bishop, I'
m her Lowell. She magicked under
the tree with the green vine flowering
yellow from a red hanging pot round the blue
hula hoop; but she's starting to fade.
She's in constant chronic pain. She still tries
to groom it and tattoo it. Yeah, what are
poems and diaries for? Her young husband
read them the time before, last time she was
here, loves her and treats her well (despite the
un-unreversed vasectomy she sold
him from abroad). Yes, yes, yes. yes, the
visitors came, and the visitors went.
(and everyone I asked to leave—has left)
Back to my sole, my own alone: i proceed
by light, by shadow, by mirror
and by picture window: ow! and oh! and if
i write letters to my old lovers, I write(s) to them
from over there.
(Dear J, Dear K, Dear L, Dear M, Dear
N(!): remember the sex in LA? re-
member the times in lakes tahoe and
cuomo? remember that time in cassis,
in paris, in marseille?)
over here (dear Ch, Dear Jh, dear Bh), (in-
versely and in a lower key), it's all
less clear, like something other than a
painting and a painting: a flowering
orchard. a kettle of trees. under which
i self-protest, -process, and -recede. to-
ward an un-impaired despair. in a
picture bed! and on a picture chair! in
the garden, in the garden, (deceiving
elf!,) my passions watered, i moderate
my sorrow, by measure, number, and
by wait.
from person to idea and
idea to gate)
and yeah.. . yeah, that WAS woodthrush. and that was night-
gale, and that was Williams, (that was ashbery!?!) and that was
Keats
(and that was some fine BULLSHIT) like a bird
it all repeats repeats repeats
until the mating's done. like this, like this:
i(t) moved from sun to shade and shade to sun:
it all happened, it all happened
i(t all) ripened, gladdened, slackened, saddened
and it happened the same way nothing happens
all of a sudden—alone in a garden—

from the book LATE SUMMER ODE / Copper Canyon Press

READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM

Forward

"Author of the Month: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach"
"Julia’s poem 'Dear Ukraine' was recently used as a prompt for a participatory installation in the lobby of Hendrix’s Windgate Museum of Art. Visitors composed their own poetry about the war in Ukraine, and their work was printed on-site and hung in the lobby. The display was supported by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation and ran through March. But the writings, which can be translated into Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, remain online at dearukrainepoem.com."
via 501 LIFE

READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES

What Sparks Poetry:
Isabel Zapata (Mexico City) on Ecopoetry Now
"I wrote the book Una ballena es un país (translated as A Whale Is a Country by Robin Myers), in an attempt to say what the language of the academy and the language of activism hadn’t allowed me to say....I conceived this book as an invitation to challenge the boundaries between action and reality, between poetry and essays and stories, between the role we think we play on this planet and the role that climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction demand we take up."

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