Calliope sings. Evening
bells clamour for the hour,
and I listen at the whistle of the train.
Suddenly I do not know
if I am going on a long journey
or nearing a sacristy,
or both.
Perhaps it is just the bells ringing
over the fond farewell of friends
that makes perfect travels
out of trainsong.
As for me I am walking
through the night,
frost breath and the ground
hard and cold.
Yonder the porchlight makes
a halo of twinkling fog,
bright as Calliope’s song.
I’m almost home.
bells clamour for the hour,
and I listen at the whistle of the train.
Suddenly I do not know
if I am going on a long journey
or nearing a sacristy,
or both.
Perhaps it is just the bells ringing
over the fond farewell of friends
that makes perfect travels
out of trainsong.
As for me I am walking
through the night,
frost breath and the ground
hard and cold.
Yonder the porchlight makes
a halo of twinkling fog,
bright as Calliope’s song.
I’m almost home.
Marilee Clement 11.30.2011
Calliope is the Greek muse of poetry.
I’m really excited to post this new piece for several reasons. The first is that I think it is a beautiful poem, and the second is that I know the author personally (we were part of the same small group in Seattle for years). In many ways, Marilee is a much better poet than myself, one who recognizes the beautiful, and the profound, and the humorous in small and common things. Her poems don’t share the air of pretension you might find in my poems—poems in which I pretend I’m the next Shakespeare by writing in antiquated forms about obvious “deep” subjects. Marilee’s verbal instincts are much better than mine, and, as a result, she doesn’t rely on the crutches of rhyme as heavily as I do myself. Because of this, I’m delighted to have Marilee be my very first guest writer and also the first example of unrhymed poetry on this blog. Hopefully, she’ll be willing to share more of her expertise in the future.