Sharon
Svendsen
Six Poems
Bringing Parnassus Down Out of
the Clouds
“Parnassus is a very small mountain.”
—Marvin Bell, from “Nineteen Statements
About Writing Poetry”
Parnassus is just a small mound.
Pegasus is really a mole.
The Muse used to live next door.
She works at Kmart.
You know how these things get
blown out of proportion,
hyperbolized.
Not that it isn’t important,
poetry.
There are lots of important
things
you have to stand on top of
poetry to reach,
and even though it is just a
mound
it is a kind of lens, also,
and maybe a mythic window
or a time machine,
but we shouldn’t let all these
definitions turn our heads.
You know how television seems
like a miracle
but a trained technician who’s
articulate
can explain TV quite well. . .
I’m not talking about the
programming here,
I mean the mechanics.
The thing is, we mystify things:
TV, poetry, seismology, religion.
Parnassus is not a snowcapped
Rocky,
not a Himalaya.
It’s more the kind of hill they
call a mountain in Indiana.
Or maybe it is a molehill,
as I said in the beginning of
this poem. . .
a molehill I could not be happy
to see disappear,
a small mound I would fight to
the death
to defend and secure.
Transcendental Toggle Switch
Off. Before I open up the book
the world is sour, the pleasure
of my friends
is muted, calls annoy me. I thumb
a page. . .
mind still short-circuited by
traffic, allies
at work. . .or are they enemies?
Who knows.
Should I read now or should I pay
my bills?
I open envelopes, my mind unfolds
the codes of those who want me
for my cash.
I sigh, open the book. Here’s
something odd:
a man is growing roses on a train
in Italy, speaking English,
making strange
red-blossomed, thorn-pricked
links on railroad cars—
and suddenly I am growing,
knowing, flowing,
click-clacking on the world’s
bright tracks, on on.
Published in Bellowing Ark
Looking at the Sky
What is there new to say about
the sky?
The sky is not new. I am not new,
except in comparison. In
comparison
I will never be truly old.
The stars will all move away
from their current positions.
They have always been moving.
Only great distances
make stars seem to be stationary.
Someday I will become an
everlasting part
of the eternal emptiness
all stars travel through.
Published in Encore, NFSPS Prize Poems
Heaven and a Coconut
I have a friend who’s equal to
the moon,
who changes tides by simply
passing by,
whose brightness helps us make
our way at night,
whose absence makes the evening
sky bereft.
Her orbit’s steady, though the
seasons fly.
When she shines most, the world
seems lunatic.
Her thoughts are lofty, high
above the crowd.
We sing her presence, moan when
she is gone.
She needs me like a fish needs
algebra.
She needs me like a bear needs
sunglasses.
She needs me like a spider needs
TV.
She needs me like a bird needs a
shag rug.
I am not even equal to a tree,
a rock, a fly. . .but wow, she
values me.
Beauty Shop
You buy it in a bottle or a jar:
remove the gray or bleach and
tint and twist
till God alone knows who you
really are.
A drop of this will cover any
scar—
Just ask your local cosmotologist:
You buy it in a bottle or a jar.
Now dab this on. Why, you’re
spectacular!
With this you’re such a skilled
illusionist
that God alone knows who you
really are!
Depressed or feeling blue? Hop in
your car,
drive down to purchase this: it
will assist:
you buy it in a bottle or a jar.
“Skin deep” your mother said. Her
words are far
behind you. Now you’re such a
modernist
that God alone knows who you
really are.
It used to seem more simple, less
bizarre;
now everywhere you turn people
insist
you buy it in a bottle or a jar.
And God alone knows who you
really are.
Bird Clock with Owl
You get home at Canada goose.
The NBC Nightly News comes on at
house wren.
We have dinner between American
robin and song sparrow.
A favorite TV program comes on at
belted kingfisher.
You are usually asleep by half
past tufted titmouse.
I often watch the news at
Baltimore oriole.
If you have fallen asleep on the
couch,
I try to get you up to go to bed
at great horned owl.
I read or write through northern
mockingbird, black-capped chickadee.
I go to bed sometime between
northern cardinal and downy woodpecker.
You get up to get ready for work
just past Canada goose.
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