POEM ONE

So this is the first poem of the resurrected Digre Poem Project! I'm super excited to be starting this again. They are all inspired by random stuff that happens during the day. This inspiration came out of looking out the window at a bus stop and seeing this one lady looking back at me. I started wondering -yes, this was during class- how different time would be if she and I, or any two people, switched places. I came to realizing it wouldn't actually change all that much; we would create our own realities, or our own times, on the contexts we're given. Finally, each little ten-line poem will generally have some sort of moral. Not all of them. Sometimes I'm lazy and get taken in by stuff that doesn't have any higher meaning but is just pretty. This was not one of them.

Moral: People affect their surroundings far more than their surroundings affect them.

And from the bus stop,
I see her. She sees me.
A different wind, a rain’s second drop,
Imagine if our lives would swap.
It would just be the same, you see.

Though we will never meet again,
We could be just the same soul splice,
Where time balances on the point of a pen.
We are part of the same amen,
And any context would suffice.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Cemetery

Hey guys-
So about once a season-ish I go outside and sit and write a poem without my computer. It's something I've been doing since last year and an exercise whose results I generally like. My free-verse poem this winter was written thus, as was another poem I wrote in the fall that I haven't posted up here but maybe will if I feel particularly autumnal. Which probably won't happen until... autumn.

BUT ANYWAY, since the weather's been nice, I've revived my walk through Dartmouth's very own cemetery in order to get back to the dorm. It's faster, prettier, and quieter than going other ways, so I figure why not. I often eat lunch there on a little ledge in a clearing, so today I decided that was where I was going to write this poem. Yay, dead people. Yay, inspiration.

Eternal sight of
Silent growing in
The cemetery. Flight of
Frost, green flowing in
Like the spring vacuum
Needs more assurance
That what grows on the back tomb
Will have element servants.

Perpetual waxing, waning,
Cool colors to fiery shades
To nothing, cold sustaining
Until the last winter fades.
The people also stayed the same.
They slept as the trees do,
But did nothing when May came.
Even tombstone color flees too.

They can watch the stages
Forever, and stay objective.
I am privy to its rages
But at least they share their perspective.
I sit, for now's eternity, here.
And bask in what they can feel.
Things here remain, so sincere.
I almost think change is not real.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Endless Rain

I've been writing a lot about the weather lately, but it's been so crazy here that I feel like I can't neglect it. It has been raining/ sleeting for about two days straight, and I cannot say that I'm pleased. I could use some UVA.


Sleet can carry endless weight
That deposits on the bank of snow.
Their muffled march and damage innate
On everything with sanguine glow
Is responsible for the landscape’s state.
Their numbers too boundless to flaunt,
Trees and snow and I go gaunt.

Inceptions, ends have no real value
In a spell like this. One drop falls
As another forms. They make two,
A third one, as it shatters, calls
For imperialism of the few
Puddle places. They may be clever,
But surely it cannot rain forever.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

So... It's snowing again.

So much for the last post... haha. This would happen on April 1st too. Thanks, Mother Nature.



Buds recede and browns prevail.
Back to what resisted switching
Climates. Back to dry leaves twitching.
Back to what is four months stale,
Flora scoffs at spring’s first fail.

Early-rising birch trees sweep
To get the new snow off the old.
They feel betrayal. They were told
That their eagerness could keep.
But now they must go back to sleep.

In flake’s pace green decays to sooty
Colors softened, shades of gray,
Thoughts that spring was here to stay.
Outraged guile may be my duty,
But how could I ever hate such beauty?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Old Snow

The waves are growing towards the sky,
As quiet as a breath’s reprise,
The amethyst but a residue,
Lingering from the recent sun.

As if none revived these dormant seas
Of third day’s snow with sheen gone dry,
The luster of this patch long spun,
Its enchantment holds but few.

The season is far from begun,
Shadowy patches no longer new,
Evaporated is the sense of ease,
Left only with a half-hearted, “Why?”

Perhaps the jejune that I drew
Reminds me of what should be done.
In this plain of sameness, void of try,
Join me as I leave for the trees.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 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