MARY CHRISTINE DELEA
I Am a Woman Before Ghosts
when the dark world is silent
I step outside surround myself
with moonflower and night-blooming jasmine
scents of specters
a marriage gone a lover dead
or the other way around no matter
the result is the same
I tried to stay put to settle
to bloom where I was what I was
but the past was a scab that would not heal
would not withy itself with the future
bad twig
a woman with a car a passport
is never stuck in the moment
never pinched between the me and the you
what once was
first I drive stopping when necessary
to sob rest areas empty parking lots
on the sides of highways where
I am alone
later I will fly from those phantoms
put myself before the deadened errors
the corpse of pain and try to begin a life
that does not reek like a funeral
Short Cento for An Old Love, Returning
Tell me where all past years are--
Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine?
The darkest evening of the year--
Tears fall in my heart.
Just like moons and like suns
And wild plum trees in tremulous white--
Everything carries me to you.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart.
With the sun in my hand,
Continuous as the stars that shine--
All thoughts, all passions, all delights
Shall be Yes for evermore.
You know I’d walk through brambles to get to you
for my virulent love for you.
It was impossible to make it through the tragedy—
weaving a wish and a weariness together.
It was the dream itself enchanted me
like a severed centaur, for lover or thief.
(A second time, to have him near again)
Time returning . . .
We will arrive there slowly:
Love is best—let’s touch the sky.
_____________________________
Sources for Short Cento for An Old Love, Returning:
Go and Catch a Falling Star, John Donne
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight, Li Po
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
Tears Fall in My Heart, Paul Verlaine
And Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
There Will Come a Soft Rain, Sara Teasdale
If You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda
Love After Love, Derek Walcott
So Tired Blues, Langston Hughes
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud, William Wordsworth
Love, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Lady’s Yes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thwarted (after Tu Fu), Carolyn Kizer
This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying, Adrian C. Louis
Becoming Seventy, Joy Harjo
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home, Robert Hayden
The Circus Animals’ Desertion, William Butler Yeats
The Migration of Bicycles, Nancy Willard
Widow, Sylvia Plath
The Rhythm, Robert Creeley
Running Away Together, Maxine Kumin
Love among the Ruins, Robert Browning/If up’s the word, e. e. cummings
Sources for Short Cento for An Old Love, Returning:
Go and Catch a Falling Star, John Donne
Drinking Alone in the Moonlight, Li Po
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
Tears Fall in My Heart, Paul Verlaine
And Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
There Will Come a Soft Rain, Sara Teasdale
If You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda
Love After Love, Derek Walcott
So Tired Blues, Langston Hughes
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud, William Wordsworth
Love, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Lady’s Yes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thwarted (after Tu Fu), Carolyn Kizer
This Is the Time of Grasshoppers and All That I See Is Dying, Adrian C. Louis
Becoming Seventy, Joy Harjo
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home, Robert Hayden
The Circus Animals’ Desertion, William Butler Yeats
The Migration of Bicycles, Nancy Willard
Widow, Sylvia Plath
The Rhythm, Robert Creeley
Running Away Together, Maxine Kumin
Love among the Ruins, Robert Browning/If up’s the word, e. e. cummings
Commitment: An N+7 Poem
It was a great many yellow birches ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it,
but I think it was in some bright cold night in April
and all the clocks were striking thistledown.1
As a youngster, I was afraid of the darkroom--
used to wake up sobbing in it, as if
it were a wattlebird and I were drowning2
Ravens are the birth I’ll miss most
when I die—if only the darkrooms3
never turn back . . . Passed yellow birches
seem safe ones, vanquished ones,
while the future lives in a cloverleaf.4
You wanna fly, you got to
give up the shiver--5
anxiety is the dobbin of freedom.6
__________________________
1 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) and 1984 (George Orwell)
2 The Natural (Bernard Malamud)
3 The Painted Drum (Louise Erdrich)
4 West with the Night (Beryl Markham)
5 Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)
6 The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of
Hereditary Sin (Søren Kierkegaard)
1 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) and 1984 (George Orwell)
2 The Natural (Bernard Malamud)
3 The Painted Drum (Louise Erdrich)
4 West with the Night (Beryl Markham)
5 Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)
6 The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of
Hereditary Sin (Søren Kierkegaard)
Copyright © November 2024 Mary Christine Delea
Mary Christine Delea, who goes by Christine, is the author of The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky (Main Street Rag Press) and 3 chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Mid-American Review, The MacGuffin, The Comstock Review, Honest Ulsterman, New Ohio Review, Zone 3 and many other journals, as well as anthologies with various themes. She grew up on Long Island and has lived all over the US, and now resides in Oregon. Delea has a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing; besides university and college teaching, she has been a social worker, improv comedy performer, retail manager, and an AmeriCorps volunteer). She currently volunteers for a number of organizations.
