Regina Coll

Thoughts of Love

To think about love, and the things that are loved
explains a way of walking, 
of holding a power blazed in our grain
in our winters, our furtive thoughts, and
love is an outline, red framing a window – shows us -

love sheds, not according to code or prescript, 
but adoring the smooth 
adoring roundness, the whole-joined curve,
love - the pitch of steel growing into sky
a number chasing a number
add 1 to freshen a 96 - what do you get
add one to you

one hand open, learn to take
then take again, love is knowing how
to take, 
this
is no accident, this is love.

© 2007 Regina Coll

Cropped

A crop to sooth us, 
trimmed to help focus our path, steady our wagons
by turning the vast     into the particular – 
from out of bouquet emerges the surrounding rose
the undulating mounds and chasms 
between each petal
winds and waters there,
evading a cornucopian jumbled artistry spilling
        births the dimpled orange skin, ripening for us
        and an apple star waits.

So seeing
seeing green and tar
seeing one flame   a corner   this hand,
seeing the cropped seduction of a velvet petal
        or the worlds within the framed eye
when not lost in panorama
what else might we see?

Yet the grand, truly grand, has knowledge too
and we run back, as a child might, to show her mother  “See ?”
because the seduction and the frame are coins, 
the only parts that can be held and forged
because we can never really hold the sea
or keep ourselves from wanting its touch.

© 2007 Regina Coll

Nature's Priest
      (from Wordsworth)

How large the moment-vessel must have been to hold the luminous throng, 
mischief-makers wearing stardust are over the shoulder now.

She leaves the tabernacle – exiled in favor of shoes and cigarettes
and the possibility of wind,
dancing on her bare hand,  
            it will shift across her face.

Her steps will be finite, 
and Change itself in its watery sermon, its fickle grace 
            will exalt her,
            ‘our hero
            our teacher
            our thief       our minstrel,’
her sword will run from neck to groin 
circled in orange, burning embers.

Ha ha triangle, she’ll ride your mercurial salts and sulfurs, 
and leave you gifts:
apples swaddled in mint
tongues buttered in verse,
she will carry,
until there comes a turning year, when she first hears the whispering throng
            then will see their shimmer before her.

Her wrinkled vision, stung and opened, will be a mirage 
            her breath a dream, but for her gifts
and her footsteps left in stone to decorate the earth
                        and the gratitude of other souls.  Ah 
she will remember their winds.


© 2007 Regina Coll

About the Poet:

Regina Coll:   I live and write in the Metro DC area and have published works with 2River View, The Kent Collector, The Cloud Appreciation Society, Advance for Nurses, Mothering Magazine, and VLQ (Verse Libre Quarterly). I am also the webmaster and coordinator for a 'poetry in non-traditional spaces' project in metro DC and Boulder CO. called The Bathroom Poetry Project.