POEM: First Saddle Sonnet

First Saddle Sonnet

This tall man, hard from handling heavy tack,

Hitches his skittish filly to a post,

Lifts curry comb to groom her bristled back

In gentle circle gestures, like a ghost

Easing an armored steed before a battle.

Once he has her breathing more at peace,

He places on a weathered western saddle

Then tugs a rough cinch tight within the crease

Between her shoulders and her ribs. He taps

Her neck and smooths out tangles in her mane,

Guiding bridle, bit, and leather straps

Over her face. She snaps. He grips a rein,

But slackly, and she softens. Slow to force,

He knows what harm’s in harnessing a horse.


© 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Details from John Singer Sargent's A Boating Party

Details from John Singer Sargent’s A Boating Party 
(1889, oil on canvas, Rhode Island School of Design Museum)

Portrait commissions left him flush enough
To rent an English house for holiday
Where River Avon glides, the side notes say,
Giving him time to make a pencil rough
He’d later trace to canvas, leaving holes
To weave a tapestry of willow trees
For background. Jotted autumn colours freeze
A figure fronted by two punting poles.

Violet, his sister, caped in fur, far right,
Leans on her forearm, dressed in green chapeau.
A second lady, standing, casts below
Her corseted reflection, balanced, white
As her husband’s lanky trouser leg that bends
To hook the flat red punt to his canoe.
This idler is the painter Paul Helleu,
Who knew what ends in grace begins with friends.

Poem © 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Birdwatchers’ guidebooks are chock-full of facts.
They tell you that waxwings have wings not of wax
But of silky plumes made of hooklet and barb
That, glimpsed from a distance, resemble the garb
Of Napoleon’s soldiers, bedecked chevaliers
Who dive from high perches when a rival appears.
They’re solemn as churches, these birders’ reviews
Of each patch of forest that passes for news.
They’re not for cycloptics who scoff with derision
At birdwatching toffs with binocular vision.
They’re binders of questions no amateur’d ask:
What face has the waxwing? A rakish black mask.
A diet of cherries and raspberries, right?
In summer, some waxwings catch bugs in midflight.
You’ll learn waxwings whistle, both females and males.
And if waxwings were wax, they’d have candles for tails.

© 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Spring Cardinal

Spring Cardinal

She rarely composes

verse. Pending motherhood

and constant foraging necessitate

close focus. However, encumbrances unfavorable

to shaping poetry monopolize

her routines

so fully

she cannot imagine

hours squandered figuring lineation

or finding metrical felicities.

Her only redemption,

though meager,

is noting likenesses, haphazardly.

Not really metaphors.

Just scattered images, analogies

of little consequence:

her partner’s

red feathers

like berries ripening,

her hatchlings

all sleeping noiselessly

as rabbits. 

©2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

[This poem is an experiment with rhopalic verse, lines in which each successive word has one syllable more than the one before it. Thanks to Avis Harley and Tricia Stohr-Hunt for the inspiration.]

POEM: The Library Steps

THE LIBRARY STEPS
By Steven Withrow

To reach the books we had to leap the lion.
Sculpted stone in place of fierce flesh,
But ferocious enough to those of us 
Who paused to tooth the toothless king
And pedicured his deadly toes
With the flat files of our stares.
We frogged him, one by one,
Palms pommeling his brow,
Split legs missing his maw
By inches. When all had passed,
None looked back. We had won.
Indoors, we stalked the fiction stacks,
Dreaming we leapt his head again,
Stone tongue tasting our fingers.

© 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Rocking Chair

I am a devoted reader of the poems of the late, great Valerie Worth, and though I lack her mastery and grace, I often try to write "small poems" of my own, attempting to give an extraordinary level of imaginative focus to an ordinary object.


Rocking Chair
By Steven Withrow

No easy chair,
This seat befits
A sea captain,
A rolling throne
For sitting
Through catnaps,
Lordly and rapt,
Stirred by swells
And the blows
Of storms,
Adoze, yet
All-aware.
A fine recliner,
It doubles
As a rocker
Knocked together
For landlubbers
Settled like
Ships docked
On becalmed laps
Of mothers, half
Keeping time,
Half asleep.


© 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Blizzard Country

Blizzard Country
By Steven Withrow

A white place you’ve come to,
After midnight’s freeze.
Rest your head on a hedgerow.
Sleep where you please.

Throw on a warmth’s worth,
A lamby balm of snow.
Your hammock a hummock of earth,
A hillock your pillow.

The cold begins to close.
Wood’s edge fades by degrees.
Your shadow now a hollow
Under ghosted trees.


© 2013 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved