Iris Lennox

Tag: Presence

  • Slowness

    A breeze slips through the open back door
    and lifts the top page
    of my notebook.

    The paper rises,
    settles,
    rises again,

    a thin white animal
    testing its legs
    at the edge of my desk.

    The corner taps the wood.

    Once.
    Twice.

    Then the whole page
    breaks loose,
    rolls into itself,
    turns sideways,
    and skitters
    across the floor.

    If paper had knees,
    this one would be bruised.

    A pigeon on the back of an Adirondack
    tilts his head
    and watches the routine.

    I wait for judgment.

    He blinks,
    ruffles one gray shoulder,
    and looks past me
    toward an old oak tree.

    Seven out of ten,
    I decide.

    Generous,
    considering the landing.

    The page rests
    beneath the chair now,
    half-curled,
    one ruled blue line
    sprawling like a vein.

    Outside,
    a dog barks once,
    then again,
    farther away.

    Beyond the back door,
    a squirrel scrapes
    inside the ceramic pot
    where I keep meaning
    to plant basil.

    Somewhere down the street,
    a truck door shuts.

    I hum three notes
    from a song
    someone sang to me once
    and cannot remember
    the next line.

    How many songs
    have been whittled
    down
    to two or three words
    and the shape of a voice?

    The pigeon steps sideways
    along the fence,
    one pink foot
    then the other.

    My notebook waits open.

    The page under the chair
    shivers
    when the breeze returns.

    —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