Spanish Moss

I was working on my other "daily vignettes," but then this just so happened to appear and I had to write it. Being a northerner, there are a lot of foreign aspects of the south. Did I mention that I'm spending the rest of winter break in Florida? Maybe not, but now you know. ANYWAY, the most haunting part of the South for me is Spanish Moss. So naturally I wrote a poem about it. Here it is... it's very rough, and I won't be doing any editing to it. It was just something that... yeah... happened.

Spanish Moss

Tree tulle conquers the mannequin,
The drapery mismatching the leaves.
Consumption. Succumbing. Nets casting for cicadas
And katydids. I cannot describe the smell:
Half like a catacomb,
Half like a carafe full of fen water.
This alien construction.
The night calls it.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

POEM!

I just proved to myself that I can't be away from poetry for too long... While on the way to Cornell with the skating team I wrote this poem about birch trees by the highway. I like birch trees. I also got back into the swing of rhyming. It's nice to go back to things sometime, though you may see a lot of free verse in the future..


The Last Birch


Protrudes like a bleached bone
Out of emaciated soil,
A semblance of decay, a highlight
Of how November makes one alone.
She shivers at the frosted coil,
She shivers at the frosted night.

Her leaves escaped a week ago. They were right to flee
With the vitality, the grass, the flat green,
The violence of a changing scene,
The forest tracing a skeletal sea.

Where are her companions now? Oh, yes.
They splinter from the ground up, like trauma
Seizing hold of a child. But I digress.
A tree cannot feel drama.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

100TH POST?!?!

I'm legitimately surprised that I made it this far on this blog. If you had told me last year that I would be still writing fairly regularly, I would've patted your head and told you to divorce yourself of your idealism. But yeah... this actually happened. Thanks to all my regular readers; I would be lying if I said that you all are my reason for maintaining this blog, but I do certainly appreciate the support I've gotten :)

So in honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to do my once a season write-up outside on the Green. I usually write in nice weather, but yesterday it was drizzly and kind of gross. This is a sonnet. However, because my class is all about me trying new things, this isn't your typical Elizabethan or Italian sonnet. This is a modern sonnet: no iambic pentameter, no fixed rhyme scheme. It does, however, have more skeletal aspects: the fourteen lines, and the volta or "turn," that changes the mood between a group of six lines and a group of eight. Without further ado, here it is

Orange Peals

I have the damndest time peeling this orange.
The trauma of its gory failure will retain in my nail beds:
Pressure too little, pressure too great.
The rinds pattering into my waste basket like hail,
Its own measurement of time: thick, saccharine exhalations every twelve seconds or so.
An organic pointillism makes a canvas out of milk cartons, blue wrappers, taciturn tissues.

Wanting to prolong the mnemonic nocturne of skin on plastic,
I stop and look at the oak tree outside my window.
Its rind is peeling too, peacefully, like a new year's ball celebrating the early rain that gave it this color.
The process is consensual, and each liberated leaf illuminates itself on the asphalt.
It doesn't even need a breeze; they both let go at the same time.
They synchronize the pealing of both clocks:
The one accepting death,
And the one accepting loss.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

26 and 27

The first poem is a poem I wrote in my journal as part of my seasonal hand-written poem exercise. I usually give trees a very bad rap in some of my poems, but I found something redeeming about them as I drove past them in the forest. They may only give an illusion of strength, but sometimes anything is good enough.

The second poem I wrote upon returning to Oslo this weekend. People are still in shock, but the city is very quiet. No students are outside, people are quiet at dinner. I don't sense despair here.


7/23

Save me, trees! I cry
You are more fortunate than I!

How you stand, foreboding
In endless array. How you stand
Forever, keeping hold of the land.
How you stand unafraid in the dark.
Never telling if you are imploding.
Never telling save your bark.

I’ve hated you for having no soul.

But you sure have this all under control.

7/24

I have seen the sky
In tears. I have seen
The clouds scream vengeance
For the loss of May.

Yet it is quiet today,
Lost the urge to cry.
Lost urge for a sentence.
Lost of all clean.

Careful how we tread,
Fragile little head.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Spring

Slanted sunlight’s stretched shadow
Chips away white layers. Pines
Don’t forget the fall ago.
Forest trees boast thicker spines.
Brown remains, but yet in slow
Reaches come the vernal vines.
Grow, little optimists, grow.

I can’t speak for everything,
Too much left for certainty.
Tomorrow’s presence may bring
Beaten frost caked on a tree,
Or a sapling’s single wing.
But that is enough for me:
Hope is all I need for spring.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Shades and Snow

Colors have no need for praise,
They seldom hold to subtlety.
They cannot hold eternity.
A suited tenure could be glaze.
Upon a surface they gently graze.

The thicket hollow with its ash,
A quiet hue of restful art,
So that trees can’t be told apart,
The darkness does to hide a gash,
Enchanting with its somber flash.

All things romantic tend to be black,
Best camouflage for small mistakes,
Ignoring what existence makes.
It also hides what good they lack,
Not knowing when the light comes back.

The trees are shadows for the snow,
Silhouettes who outlast their theme,
Dark lines that withstand a dream.
As limbs are covered with silky glow,
Their shaking sleeps. The night is slow.



Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

PS: I took the picture too [:

Architect

Balanced on pine and oak and cedar.
Silent the night, silent the air.
Silent the breathing, the wind, the bird feeder.
Silent everything. Silent there.

It could be the flour on my hair
As I dust frosting on the yard.
The stillness left in every pair
Of snow white eyes left dry and hard.

I could exhale upon this card
And give ears to this quiet night
But I am but this moment’s bard,
And in my work I take delight.

Yet not in long the wind will fight
The stillness and the trees will move.
The dusting will at last take flight
But I shall never disapprove.

My work is meant to but remove
The tiredness of pressing day,
A fleeting gift for all that you’ve
Been wanting in your want to stay.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre