Apricot Wood
I built a frame of apricot
wood. This was for you. The clouds float
through it even as I sleep. You wrote
once of wild herbs gathered and brought
to a lovely girl, an offering not
of passion but of some remote
desire to hear a word from the throat
of the Lord Within Clouds. I thought
of this as I chiseled the wood.
Last night it rained. I listened to
it from my bed by the open
window, hoping that the clouds would
not leave. This morning two birds flew
by. It is raining again.
Originally penned in the 1980s, “Apricot Wood,” is included in my 2015 chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. It was first published in 1986, in SPSM&H, a publication devoted to sonnets, and was featured on Autumn Sky Poetry Daily in March 2015. It’s interesting to look at my writing from this period. Some pieces seem to have been written by a stranger, long ago and far, far away. This one somehow seems closer.
O at the Edges 
So Lovely!!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Susan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s your voice, but somehow dreamier. You are much more rooted now I think. (K)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The weight of years has contributed to my rootedness!
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s one way to look at it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If I stumbled onto this w/o your name, I’d think … ah, sort of Okaji-like … the jumps from thought to thought across time spans … the brevity of description that lets the reader visualize and fill in from your cues …
Really like this! And the reading.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Though I tried back then to duplicate this type of poem, I wasn’t able to. The voice hadn’t yet developed sufficiently, and all I managed were poor imitations. Which is funny, now that I think of it: I failed to copy myself. Ha!
LikeLiked by 3 people
I sometimes look back at old work and realize that someone else really did paint it. The brushwork and color look foreign even if a familiar hint of attitude glimmers near the surface. Creatives and diarists get the sometimes embarrassing opportunity of seeing how they’ve evolved. Enjoyed seeing a glimpse of the past when I read this poem.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Much of my old writing seems foreign to me, but occasional pieces ofer a glimpse, perhaps in a turn of phrase or even a rhythm, of the current writer. It’s an interesting process.
LikeLike