Iris Lennox

Tag: Nostalgia

  • The Wren Comes Once a Year


    The wren comes once a year to me,
    in July, toward the close of day,
    when heat still trembles in the trees
    and all the shadows stretch away.

    He chooses neither branch nor wire
    but lands upon the weathered gate,
    his little breast a pulse of fire,
    as if a bird could carry a date.

    I stand inside. I do not move.
    The glass is warm beneath my hand.
    He lifts his throat into the grove
    and sings what I don't understand.

    Last year, I wrote a lyric here
    when this same wren sang into night.
    Tomorrow lingered, soft and near,
    inside his handful of twilight.

    This year he comes. I write a poem.
    He tips his head and sings once more.
    I do not ask how he has known
    to find the same July-lit door.

    This year I keep the window closed.
    The curtain stirs against my wrist.
    Outside, the evening bends and folds;
    the hedge turns blue beneath the mist.

    The wren knows nothing of before.
    He doesn't count what I have kept.
    He sings beside the garden door
    where last year's fallen petals slept.

    Perhaps he came for no one here.
    Perhaps the gate was simply near.
    Perhaps a wren comes once a year.

    And still I wait until he's gone
    before I move or breathe again,
    while dusk collects across the lawn
    and one small branch remembers the wren.

    —Iris Lennox

  • The Curve of Time

    You might as well befriend the moon—
    embrace her clouded peekaboos.
    And music…

    Receive the tune—
    no time to choose—
    alone in a crowd
    or no one in view.
    And a smell…

    Wafts past your nose—
    what was that?
    Or who?

    Perfume on skin
    or a place that you knew.

    Pause.

    No need to wonder—
    you know who that was—
    and who you are
    as nostalgia winds
    the second hand round.

    “Time is a straight line,” said he.
    “It moves consecutively,
    watches as it goes
    behind and below,
    like walking a path
    that winds into—
    well—
    no one knows.”

    “No one knows,
    that’s right,” said she.
    “Simply put, I do agree.
    But there’s no line to speak of.
    Time bends—not like a knee—
    more like a finger touching its thumb
    or a rainbow finding its spherical end
    and answering with a gentle, Come.”

    Time returns to the places we’ve been.

    One says, “That memory is far.”
    Another, “The moment is here.”

    Yesterday can be set down,
    but the nows of that day
    rise from the ground
    without notice
    or sound—

    to delight or confound—
    it depends on the seconds
    into which they were bound.

    Moments become recollections.
    Recollections, seeds
    with a life of their own.

    Promises and hope,
    gentleness and rage,
    a touch, a glance,
    a well-appointed room
    or a half-written page—

    all sown into skin,
    finding rest in
    smiles and tears,
    repose and toil,
    love and loss,
    freedom and cost,
    and the way sunlight lay
    across the earth
    at the end
    or when it all began.

    “That was back then,” said he.
    “That is today,” said she.

    The minutes listened.

    “There is wisdom in both.”

    Time smiled—
    crouched, quiet—
    behind an autumn tree,
    waiting
    for the final leaf to fall.

    —Iris Lennox

  • Noon or 1987

    Nostalgia is slippery
    like a water snake.
    One deliberate squeeze
    and there it went. 

    Exit upon exit
    if you look at it. 
    Look away,
    and beware it's return.

    A mower hums somewhere
    beyond the houses,
    a duet of humming and bass,
    moving through the air
    because afternoons 
    have always sounded this way.

    A whisper of perfume
    passes—
    familiar, specific—
    caught for a second
    in the space between two steps.

    A child runs ahead,
    hair lifting and falling
    across her forehead,
    light moving with it,
    time carried in the motion
    like once
    before
    with a different name.

    The body looks at its wrist.
    What time is it—
    noon or 
    1987?

    A recognition
    without language,
    already underway.

    Memory follows
    in pieces.

    You reach toward it—
    toward the full arrangement,
    the exact alignment
    of what it felt like
    to stand there.

    Who you were.
    Who they were. 
    Where, again? 
    And, why?

    Then
    without warning
    it arrives.

    Complete.
    Immediate.
    Undivided.

    Distance closes.
    The past takes its place
    inside the present,
    fully formed,
    in at least two of your senses.

    For a moment.

    Then it releases.

    You only have yourself
    to blame.

    Next time, 
    look at it sideways.

    — Iris Lennox

    This poem appears in The Giving of Weight.