17 Feb 2009 Leave a comment
in 2009, circling round nature, swedish book Tags: 2009, circling round nature, swedish book
Observation In The February Swedish Sun
Skin
In the sun,
Vitamin D
Beckoning.
I feel walk-ier already.
Two thousand nine,
Twelve, February:
Six new months of sun-high sky.
July and then,
Less ‘D’ for me,
My brittling bones to own
And tighten:
Just an observation.
© In The February Swedish Sun 2.12.2009
Circling Round Nature; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin
17 Feb 2009 Leave a comment
in 2009, circling round nature, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles Tags: 2009, aging, circling round nature, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles
Interpreting Signs
The pluckéd eyebrows still grow back;
A secret symptom only we,
The caged in age, perceive.
We watch and sometimes grieve.
We know our bodies
Singular- collectively;
We see what’s stopped,
What’s slowed, what’s new;
We know what we inhabit but,
We feel what we have always been.
We know how to interpret.
© Interpreting Signs 1.15.2009
Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Vanities; Circling Round Nature;Circling Round Woman;
Arlene Corwin
31 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 2008, circling round nature, the processes creative thinking meditative Tags: 2008, circling round nature, the processes creative thinking meditative
Days Of Energy
Days of energy, received
By rhythms never visible;
Days to share, to give,
To storm the brain
For forms to rain down,
Bursting forth –
Ambassadors
Of light
That wake to spring,
That spring to strength
Regardless of the phase of moon;
A marathon
Of all the billion lengths
Of synapsed nerves,
The track, each curve
Approached olympically.
Days predicting what could be
If this was how eternity
Looked.
© Days Of Energy 5.20.2008
Circling Round Nature; The Processes:Creative,Thinking, Meditative;
Arlene Corwin
30 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, circling round nature Tags: 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, circling round nature
Changing Hairs
The hairs are changing.
Something that you notice
When you’re aging.
Gauge that keeps us posted;
Barometric dynamo: hair all over
Disappearing, changing color,
Showing up and changing texture,
Thinning out or exiting entire.
Brows from east to west now growing, going
North or deeply south.
My husband’s arm hairs
Blonde, sparse, silky –
Have by inches, reached the armchairs
In a logic all their own.
As for my hairs – chin, lip, pubic,
While conforming to some mad directive
Have re-formed, deformed
Without informing me –
Hairs where they should not be.
And not, of course, where they should…
How unfair that there exists
Such devious diversity.
Distorted in their programmed lives,
The crazy long-lived hair that thrives
On being tweezed and waxed and shaven.
There’s a mystery in there – in hair.
The answer lies in heaven.
© Changing Hairs 7.8.2008
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Circling Round Nature;
Arlene Corwin
29 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 2008, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, I Is Always You is We Tags: 2008, circling round nature, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, I Is Always You is We
Beauty Gone
It isn’t that I was a beauty,
But the mirrors and the date remind me:
Youth has beauty.
Grounded in the supple,
“You’re the apple of my eye”, says Nature.
Ageing’s mystery,
The muscle mass,
Proportions nose to lips,
Waist/hips
The elasticity replaced…
Cheekbone, with its hostile lines
That droops a jaw, chin through to neck.
Oh, heck, maybe the wick
Of beauty really comes
When youthful beauty goes.
© Beauty Gone 10.29.2008
Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Woman;
Circling Round Wrinkles; I Is Always You Is We;
Circling Round Vanities;
Arlene Corwin
27 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, birth death & in between, circling round nature, circling round reality, circling round vanities, I Is Always You is We, lessons to be learned, life Tags: 2008, a sense of the ridiculous, being sick, birth death & in between, circling round nature, circling round vanities, definitely didactic, getting well again
Beauty top priority.
But when chips are down,
Three days a-bed,
Papers read,
Radio a-listenéd,
Computer sites computeréd,
Still sick and sickened,
I can sympathize with those who let it pass away
Voluntarily. Yet,
Every glass is half-full,
Backs have fronts,
Effects make causes new,
And you –
You’re not a body with a soul,
But soul with body.
Since you never know what waits,
The sick and tired body
Has a vanity-less duty
To hold out, push on the fates
And live.
Arlene Corwin
19 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 1998, circling round nature Tags: 1998, circling round nature
It Happens Suddenly
It happens suddenly. The stage:
A day, two days, a week – not more;
One hopes not more than seven days
Of listless lying in this cage –
Lying lion, padlocked door.
Dull and purposeless the phase,
A dozy wad of forceless ‘bod’;
The live physique, the moving form,
The very force that slows you up
Lets you down
And stops you in your tracks.
Which the servant, which the master?
Microbe, hormone, enzyme, gene?
Within their root harangue disaster
Stagnates, corpse-like,
“Health, ill health” the daisy game.
Inertia in its very static feels like bliss –
Even in its aimlessness:
This mystery and curse.
Sky keeps alternating.
Swedish clouds belie a sun
Which, in a fifteen minute spell,
Warms chin, the room I’m in,
A hazy dell and then I’m well.
Well enough to sense the sage
Behind the hidden goings on,
Despite this cage;
Sense the causes, look at seasons,
Guess at reasons
Spring gets sprung, the lung of nature
Gets its leaves,
Old gets young again and summer
Takes its place with grace. Sheaves
Of projects still to do:
I will spring to life anew.
It happens suddenly.
©It Happens Suddenly 98.5.7
Circling Round Nature;
Arlene Corwin
14 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 1998, birth death & in between, circling round nature, circling round reality, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, the processes creative thinking meditative Tags: 1998, birth death & in between, circling round nature, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, the processes creative thinking meditative
Going, Going, Gone
You’ll think that I’m a wimp,
This, lamentation.
This is not a whine or ‘wingeing’ –
This is for the women
Just to show we are one breed.
Besides which, I am scientific:
Deep inside I need to measure.
I succeed in looking good with color from the pot,
The dew is definitely gone.
Pose, clothes achieve a lot,
But lines above the lip define
What hairs betray with deadly aim –
That estrogen has passed away:
Estrogen has stayed its time.
Cropping up and popping out on eyebrow, chin
Where corners of the mouth cave in,
Unpredictable as blight.
Fifty-six was nifty-six.
Flaws would go back overnight.
Now muscle, ligaments within
Need more protein:
Wrinkly, crinkly
Thigh king-post twinkly.
Sanity or vanity –one’s more and one’s reduced,
This warp insidious
Yet nothing-ness.
Perhaps we’re really walking minds;
Organisms old as now,
Young as a nineteen thirty-four,
Youth-eating time, the omnivore
Where body’s going, going, gone.
If one is not to give a fig,
But keep on digging
Out of scientific interest,
Dressing up until the interest dies away,
That’s quite okay.
It’s just a game. I’ll play.
©
Going, Going, Gone 98.10.26Circling Round Woman; Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Circling Round Vanities; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Circling Round Nature;
Arlene Corwin
13 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 1998, circling round nature, circling round woman, I Is Always You is We, nature of & in reality Tags: 1998, circling round nature, circling round woman, I Is Always You is We, nature of & in reality
Body Talk
Have you learned to recognize fear
In the stomach?
Washing a dish: quiet act, it would seem;
And there it is:
Jumpiness
Right in the stream
Of intestinal movement;
Maybe the need to evacuate, go –
So you do.
It’s still near,
Stomach’s mobility coming from nowhere.
Fear,
And no obvious pattern to bring it:
Worry or hurry,
Or eminent figure expected to lunch.
Call it a hunch
But it’s fear from somewhere –
There,
Like a problem you see but can’t solve,
A bunch of invisible knots that evolved
From the blots left by childhood;
Memory-hints that blighted the schooldays:
Tests and comparisons,
Raising of hands and the ever-permissions
Spotting expression and lightness and will
Dampened to stillness.
Back to the now,
The fear in bowel-
Body talk.
©
Body Talk 98.1.4
11 Jan 2009 Leave a comment
in 1997, circling round nature, our times our culture, small stories book, swedish book Tags: 1997, circling round nature, our times our culture, small stories book, swedish book
Waiting For Spring #1
It’s April and it’s snowing.
Extraordinary that!
The snow is thick and growing,
And my husband says, “It’s only rain.
A little white – but going.
He’s just changed to summer tires.
Wind is blowing.
Shame, if on his way to work
His auto needed towing.
These are funny times, I think,
With nothing to rely on.
Weather-wise, they really stink.
The planet’s gone awry, on
Top of which the baddies
Are increasing all the time,
Diverting scientific steam
To search for groups to spy on.
Dear, oh dear, while lying here
The snow continues piling:
Up and up and up and up
While I continue smiling.
Snow has charm. One could
Describe it as beguiling,
That despite the forecast.
It’s an occupation in itself,
This waiting for the buds.
Proof will be a game of golf
And features about floods;
Flowers on the forest floor,
Fledglings for the cat;
Preferences for milky fare
And victual without fat,
And everything
That comes with spring –
I’m waiting for all that.
Still, it’s April twenty-third.
Rising snow is right outside.
The wood stove is prop-full of birch,
The golf clubs stand untried.
I had hot porridge as a snack.
I needed something warm.
Spring, why are you holding back
Your green and floral charm?
Arlene Corwin
Arlene Corwin Poetry 