From My Corner Seat
From My Corner Seat
William Flewelling
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© 2012 by William Flewelling. All rights reserved.
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First published by AuthorHouse 12/29/2011
ISBN: 978-1-4685-3849-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4685-3848-9 (ebk)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011963714
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Reformulating
She Leaned To Cut
the Blooms That Day
“The Older Woman”
BHS: Class of ’63
The Cattle Come And Go
A Birthday Thought
A Satisfaction Known
While Waiting
On The Outdoor Bench
I Say She’s Chasing Change
Procedural Aplomb
As Choristers Implore
On Palmer Ridge
Implicit Solemnity
One Rose, Set Apart
In Howell’s Paean
An Unavoidable Passing,
As It Seems
He Watches Alzheimer’s
In Rage
The Familiar Crow Perch Tree
Directions On The Air
Shadow Work
Just Like That Maple Burl
The Deer In Flight
A Stark Night
All From A Fluster
And Mrs.
He Went Once More To Normandy
An Explaining Of The Night
An Exchange: Modest Enough
The Sitting Still An Issue
Tomatoes Win The Night
One Man At Prayer
An Unthought Legacy
The Early Thunderstorm
The Tulips
A Hymn Is Sung
On Mother’s Day
A Quiet Reading Preferred
Head In The Cloud
Pictured Arrayed In
Almost-Lines
A Gathering
Across The Shelf
From The Chrysalis
of Complaint
When All Is In The Air
And All The Rest
Great? Or Merely
Well Enough?
Beggaring The Question
The Comfort An Infant Glows
At That Later Seam
Acceptably Assessed
A Surreptitious Sleight
“In Obscurum”
Intending Not To Overhear
And, After The Breath…
Inopportune Computer Glitch
Approaching Compline
Quite Useless For The Cause
As Cast Aside
A Visionary Dilemma
The Count
Sunshine’s Benefit Concert
Sat At The Next Table
The Quiet Man
Balancing Act
At Peace
Met Amid Necessities
Once Again, In Context
Renewing Now
Attending To The Chores
So Open In Defense
Lone Rabbit In Tall Grass
Jack Remembered
One Pause In Melancholy
On Hilary Hahn:
Brahms’ Violin Concerto
All Aswirl Amok
Air Beneath An Arm
As I Ramble On
The Old Man
Recalled From Reverie
So Known
As Missing Now
Exchange By Gesture
Held At The Font
We, Coming At The
Last Of Times
Coffee Ground
Upon A Second Request
With Utter Grace
Ankh
Correctly Poised
Beloved Yet
Upon Motet
At Departure
By Such Arrangements
Re: Joyce
Pen to Page
“Begin Anywhere”
Against May’s Mime
Of Next July
The Now-Bare Hill Crest
Carmella
Hard Frost, I See
The Sign
A Mote Of Non-Constraint
Postlude: In Underplaying
The Focusing Smoke
As Thus Conviction Comes
Reformulating
A dark serenity
glides solemn past review,
oblivious and yet
the intimate resolve
of bitter mysteries.
O Gentle River, baked
in Summer sun, your strength
slides laminar and smooth,
continuing as peace
threads graciously between
stern looming heights; your sweep
provides unruffled strength.
On floating peace is borne
those bloating agonies
we own. They rise as arms
those hills imply, to grope
the skies, by cumulous
ascent to soaring heights,
that dissonance expose
our dark serenity.
WCF
25 June 1999
She Leaned To Cut
the Blooms That Day
It must have in fifty three,
or maybe fifty four when she
cut flowers by the door to wear
at my lapel—a little boy
on Mother’s Day. The one she chose
for me—a tulip bud—shone red
and bold because my mother lived,
she said. And hers were bells of white—
a sprig of lily of the valley—
because her mother died the spring
of forty eight. And now I find,
if I should wear again the bloom
on Mother’s Day in twenty twelve,
I’d need to find myself a sprig
of lily of the valley white.
We buried her today, you see.
WCF
9 August 2011
“The Older Woman”
A timid sort of limp
brings a purple shirted woman
into the room. It’s warm
and she’s in flip-flops, shorts
and shirt, with wire rimmed glasses
and freely flowing hair
hung straight and cropped above
/>
her nape. The Older Woman;
so reads her shirt as she
comes once and goes, returns
to finish off her chores,
self-bussing as we do.
She glances as I glance,
and smiles, and nods before
she passes past my space
with gimpy stride and slow,
reluctant shuffled drawn
behind her persistent way.
WCF
7 May 2010
BHS: Class of ’63
after news of the death of Pam Champion Wright
We’ve reached an age: we read of death
and find it all too tangible
for us. So suddenly we look
at fifty years, reunion, hear
of names we’ve lost in time, of deaths
among the people we once knew.
The pretty girl in bobby socks;
the tall boy—shy until he found
the girl who makes him smile; the girl
who owned delight in careful poise;
and now another girl—a smile
and bounce and pony tail: we look
and all these faces are as ours—
now tempered by the years, attuned
to many things unknown when life
was young and we commenced in free
enticement toward the fruit of youth
we’d shared. These deaths are strangely ours,
extinguishing a glimpse on time
and person, even on ourselves
that once had seemed impregnable.
We ramble now, defending time,
asserting that we will adjust
in busyness, in patience—all
the while aware of memories
no longer bringing faces near,
and how these deaths grow closer now
as bodies wear the grind of years.
WCF
27 July 2011
The Cattle Come And Go
Below us, down the slope,
beyond the fence and mowed
yard, in the flank high grass
the cattle roam as restless
in the sun this afternoon.
I watch the rich brown hide
that glistens broadly, moves
relentlessly along
the lower slope. I watch
as we sit on the lawn;
the grass stirs on the sides;
the legs and belly are
presumed. We talk and glance
across the distance shared
and words that dally, lean
and crafted. Next, I look
into the long grass; cattle
no longer appear. I turn
instead to dandle phrases
in long allusions here.
WCF
3 June 2011
A Birthday Thought
for Sr. Cornelia on her 87th
The anniversary day
of birth: the coming goes
in celebration, fades
in knowing creeping time
brings shuffle to the feet
and frailty where once life
was lithe and pert. We rise
to greet the day once more,
a day accounting life’s
consistency and—yes—
the dregs that long have steeped
the quality of grace
attentive here. The day
begets its image, shows
one’s singularity
within the stirring ground
wherein life rises once
again and totters, free
and gleeful over bliss
that is the fractal means
of satisfying one
dear heart, the altar place
of sheer delight in love.
WCF
27 June 2011
A Satisfaction Known
for Sr. Mary Fay on her 70 year Jubilee
The many years roll on unthought
until their many crests in sign
at fifty, sixty, seventy
or more. Then, on the looking back
across the span from youth to age,
the mellowing maturity
draws from the heart, the belly, all
the consecrated humanity
so aptly offered once, those years
before. Vocation works itself
into the habits life discovers
creatively emerging—known
after they live a while—these years,
that is—and mold a model, form
a sample of the habit worn
and rule observed, the family
become of sisters under rule
within the warp and woof of time.
It all comes celebrated now
in faces, futures, memories
of those who welcomed, those who’ve shared
and those who came into the roll
of years that satisfy—complete
unto today and lingering
into tomorrows not yet guessed.
WCF
26 July 2011
While Waiting
On The Outdoor Bench
The single black ant, searching, probes
the concrete slab, meandering
with jaunty bounce this way and that
from sunshine into shade and near
my foot just now. October sun
is compromising with the air,
a warmth against the back, a chill
about the feet, down where the lone
ant ambulates the barren slab
in search of something able to fill
desires while avoiding heedless steps
of busy, passing feet, disaster
for such as this considered ant.
WCF
19 October 2009
I Say She’s Chasing Change
One says she knows her—and
would question trust on matters
of money: not too long,
at least. She grinned as she
slipped round the corner, swung
her swaying hips beyond
the jamb and out of sight.
Not long at all: then she
returns; the dollars sift
through fingers, counting four
to calculate the change
I’m due. A hand extends,
the spray of dollars shown
for me to grasp, a light
inductive grin the shine
that cures my waiting time.
WCF
7 May 2010
Procedural Aplomb
In face, a solemn matte
deferral of a sight
content with a human lot,
no singularity
imposes brightness’ spark.
I wonder often how
this cloture might unravel
into the liminal
intrusion, lithe and blithe
of nothing more than one
incisive smile. A slice
as that into the core,
unveiling to reveal,
conceal, exceed the real
with a reeling glimpse sublime.
WCF
4 May 2010
As Choristers Implore
As Ubi Caritas turns et
amor, the singers’ faces loom
in singu
lar array. I lift
my eyes: a certain luring light
illumines gracefully. I see
that singing face as rapt, the eyes
displaced to savor round in song
toward ibi coming pointed next.
The ibi I behold in that
distracted face is as the ubi
already sung within the swell
of unison’s adept intent.
NB: Ubi caritas et amor, ibi deus est. Latin refrain for “Where charity and love are, there is God.”
WCF
2 May 2010
On Palmer Ridge
Uncanny quiet in these hills:
the Autumn breeze disturbing leaves
that rattle on these twigs, the birch
at whispering the secrets hid
in silence on the ridge. We stand
observing landscape fall and rise
anon, to fall and rise again
full compass round. The mounting hills
are clad in wood, in leaves yet green
and yellow green, a patch of pine,
then orange, red, a yellow hue
in splotches on that rising slope.
But silence sounds: a tire rolls long
on pavement, whining in its way.
A saw lends whirring ring in echo
from cross the way. They pause and leave
this silence to be heard and, more,
be felt beneath the whispering birch.
I think the whisper tells of silence,