Patchwork

The patchwork faded from the year,
With more turmoil than it should require,
The blanket whose whole form is mere
Semblances of far and here,
Lies in the coals of a cleansing dire.
It takes its complaints up with the fire.

And as the seams cut the squares all free,
Their ashes vortex through the space.
When all is done it is time for me
To fashion another from the debris
Of all the moments in their grace.
Their blessing is how they erase.

The segments can be any creed,
And vary in their size and hue.
They’re not a want, but more a need,
And to free them vindicates my greed
And lauds me with a chance anew
To show me what a year can do.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre

Two-Toned Sunset

Hello everyone! So this weekend I was very busy with the holidays and was too busy (read: too lazy) to write a poem this week. So here is a poem I wrote a while back when I woke up from a nap in my dorm and watched the mid November sunset. I haven't written much about sunsets, so I found this poem in particular rather interesting.

Enjoy!

-CD

Two-toned Sunset

The sky exhales a sleepy tan,
As the sun by now has grown wan.
I am but a witness few,
To what a fall sunset can do.
It lingers on the tops of trees,
Like blue cotton, like blue seas.

Like an isle started anew,
Half is sandy, and half is blue,
The atmosphere a salty breeze,
Inceptive like a giver’s knees.
Far before a “will” or “can,”
Far before just any man.

A new world forming, my eye sees,
Just as light withdraws and flees.
The ocean darkens, the colors span,
Until the water does its plan.
This world’s colors are just two:
Black like the trees, blue like you.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 by Cali Digre

Christmas Eve

Mumbled greetings, fumbling hand,
Shaking only as a motion,
Perhaps none of them understand
Why on earth we do this band
Of formalities. A shallow ocean.

I’m sad to say that every day
Our time is but a muddled cloth
Of noise and poorly kneaded clay,
Converging to a shade of gray.
We squabble over a tasteless broth.

But in an evening what does matter
Is brought forth in a sudden white.
She does not take to heart such flatter
And feels no need to promptly shatter
A thing filled with simple delight.

Our claims can only go so far.
As if we knew none of violence,
We hold each snowflake as a star.
Their sheen makes the night popular.
The world watches her in silence.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 By Cali Digre

Ornament

A tree grew in our house one year.
It smelled of timelessness and wood.
With hands too small, that handled with fear
The golds and reds and glassy stars,
I pointed that I wanted one here,
To hang lightly on a piney hood,
To hang so that my grasp was near.
The needles left me sticky scars.

I made a green pot that day at school,
And stuck large craft stones on its rim.
In my fingers, its touch was cool,
A whole class work’s entanglement with glue.
Accomplishment. Though I was a fool
To think it could hang as a spring hymn
Given its mass. A newly learned rule.
I readjusted, and tried anew.

The fragile ones were at the top.
They mirrored my pawing with their shine.
At some point I would hear a “STOP!”
And I’d recoil in quiet shame.
Once one like a silk web chose to drop
And in its descent I caught what was mine,
Repeated, like a reflective crop,
Blinking, breathing, all the same.

We brought a tree back home today.
I’m trusted with the fragile ones.
I still like to keep them far away,
Because they’re always turning pages.
But one that I will always let stay
Is too heavy for a branch’s sons.
I weigh it in my palm to say:
“The girl on the tree never ages.”

Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre

No Snow for Hanover

As if she were the final puzzle piece
In a jigsaw of unrelated snow,
She waits for the tapestry to be completed,
For the incompleteness to cease.
The final image she cannot know.
Pieces have their holism defeated.

But as she bides for her chance in white,
To be at last the fated semblance,
The time passes, and her existence seems lost.
It seems unfair to not delight
And to not inspire any remembrance
In the labyrinth of early frost.

So she takes pride as the single brown,
The patch that snow has yet to touch.
In the sea of white, she is an island,
In a crowd of smiles, she is a frown.
In the bounteous little, she is much.
There is much to rejoice as dry land.

She feels esteem for dissidence,
For defying the normalcy of winter.
She is the single patch of warm.
And I can say with confidence,
That I could merely be her splinter:
In this world of ice, I’m free from harm.

I’m the life in an ambiance of sleep.
I am the soft in surrounding sleeting.
I am matte in the middle of glare.
They must leave, but I can keep,
I have no obligation for fleeting.
I watch the pieces move towards fair.


Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre

New Snow Villanelle

Oh, endless white, like she were starting new!
And even when the sunset marks the end.
The fanning outwards under silky blue.

The endless rain of feathers lost in hue,
When soft whispers of wind cause them to bend,
Oh, endless white like she were starting new!

It would not be enough to have but few,
And many more to earth the time will send,
The fanning outwards under silky blue.

They are too soft for touch, too tough for chew
But blessed with heart, and blessed by grounds to mend.
Oh, endless white, like she were starting new!

Erasing graft lines would be hard to do.
This snowy sketch would not be good to wend,
The fanning outwards under silky blue.

Against the monochrome I can’t find you,
As if your color was all you could lend.
Oh endless white, like she were starting new!
The fanning outwards under silky blue


Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre

Past

The things that I most fear in life
Are the things I’m less apt to understand.
The things that I know less about,
The things that I could never know.
Things you can hold in your hand,
But in my own would give me strife.
Things I could exist without
But in whose knowledge I tremble so.

The paradox so unpleasant
About which I quiver on recall,
Is how by knowing more of you
The more frightened I become.
I wish you had no past at all,
I wish you only had a present.
I wish I were your inception, too,
I wish I were your only sum.

Like some selfish leech, I adhere
To your current with such need.
I depend on your looking in front,
And so I hate what lies behind.
Albeit I see my own greed,
And how it waxes all in fear,
I forgo tact, and just say blunt:
“I wish your past weren’t so kind.”

When I go back home, far removed,
Though “home” is really just a word,
For I’m a tourist in my stead,
I don’t know how you’re going back.
You’re going home, so I’ve heard,
The meaning of it all disproved
By my own. For in my head
I envy all the things I lack.

Road Trip

Why can’t I quite look past
The first line of darkened trees?
The lighting on the road sufficient,
I can see all of it quite omniscient.
But what I cannot see with ease
Is what I know is built to last.

The road gives way to stronger woods,
As if it knows that they were first.
But yet the lamps that map the route
Drown out the nature in a bout
Of harshness. This is the worst
Of our “wants,” our “haves,” our “could”’s.

I’m never one to hate any light,
For showing any path is fair.
But to have existence so intrude
I find perhaps to be too crude.
I wish I couldn’t see here, but there.
I wish the forest were more bright.

Perhaps my favorite thing about cars
Is how they are likely to be stopped
Without notice. So I look left
To quickly marvel at her deft
Work. With the high beams dropped,
I can look freely at the stars.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre