Tuesday, July 25, 2006

CONSIDERING FLIGHT
Monday Night at the P&G Speakeasy Cafe in Duvall, Poet Katherine Grace Bond read from her new book CONSIDERING FLIGHT (Brass Weight Press 2006)

The room was packed and we were entranced by the journey taken from first poem to last. It was sweltering in the cafe but we didn't want to move outside where breezes beckoned until Katherine finished the book.

Katherine's poems centered on the father/daughter relationship. They were riveting --honest, clear, complex, sweet, bitter, raw -- beautiful.

Here's a selection from CONSIDERING FLIGHT

Gentle Into Twilight

In the soft dead of that good night
Are shouts that were not shouted
To shame me
And his retreating back in a rummage sale jacket,
Carrying a plastic bag of Atlantic Monthlies.

His voice I'd like to bottle and keep,
Words the timbre of well-tuned glass,
Too effete for his ears.

His feet, he'd cut off
And walk on stumps
If it kept him a man.

He drowses near his ashtray
Studying the Trojan Wars alone
And Plutarch speaks to him in dreams.

I am his daughter.
I know the aria of the Queen of the Night
And can sing it in the woods
If the need arises.

I can pluck apples from the air,
But his basket will never be full.

I could reach my white bones out
To pull him from that dusk
And find his body heavy,
Spinning empty in my hands.

* * *

To read more amazing poems order CONSIDERING FLIGHT.
Send email to Katherine@Katherinegracebond.com

May poetry find you this week.
May the words surprise you and may your pen flow
in cool dark evening rivers.

Until the next blog. Be well.