To the Poet—S. K.—
on Channel WNET-13
Your unexpected
radiance lightens the gloom
in Brooklyn. You hunch;
you sit by the sea.
Rumbling like the rumpled waves,
your voice splashes me.
Your eyes incite play,
defy hundred-year-old skin,
though every crease hears
death’s whisper. You dawn
on me. Spilled from my vessel,
adrift,
I drink your words,
like the ocean drinks the light
of raging sunset.
Factually
facts
are
stones:
quiet,
unchangeable
context.
if you turn
a stone
in your hand,
it presents
different aspects
of itself
if you look
at the fifteen stones
in the garden of
Ryōan-ji, you will see
only fourteen, no matter
where you stand.
if you submerge
a stone, its color
will intensify,
even transform,
without changing
the fact of stone.
if you suppress
stone, pressurize
a molten fact,
it will erupt
in unanticipated ways.
if you holler
in a canyon, stone
will reverberate with echoes.
stone is more ancient than words,
as deep as bedrock, oceanic crust, iron core
as broad as spinning planets circling a universe of stars.
like truth, like love, a fact is the pebble in your shoe, the jewel in your palm.
Mabel Ferragut Smith believes that poems are tendrils that coil between strangers, weaving secret, precise, intimate connections. She writes and reads in pursuit of that moment when the right poem meets the right reader, and magic happens. In addition to writing, she has worked as a choreographer and an architect. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two children, where she is the keeper of a Cuban heritage and beautiful dances, with a tiny forest in the background. She has poetry in Little Patuxent Review. Find her online at mabelferragutsmith.com or @MabelWrites.
Image by PumpkinSky – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61356182
