POETRY BY SYBILLA
Approaching the Writing Room
​
The room is silent, sullen.
My pens face away, holding their dry ink breath.
My books are closed, spines shunning my touch.
My chair is turned away, arms aloof.
Standing before my indifferent desk
I am the disrobing adulteress – ashamed
of how I spent the time before this moment,
afraid my lover will not want me now.
Such long delays …
So many betrayals …
I have been pursuing others:
Kooser, Frost, Bukowski , Blake …
I have swooned with masters of the art.
I have been stumbling in fear,
hushed by voices so unlike mine
blind to my vision
deaf to my heart.
How jealous is my muse?
Will he rush to me
cueing the violins
animating these empty pages
with our passion?
Or will he punish me with cruel distance?
This is not the first time I’ve cowered
silenced by mockery, self-doubt.
I have quailed before at being seduced alive
perhaps to emerge an unfamiliar self.
I whisper a prayer of contrition
and eke onto paper what I can alone,
waiting for him to raise his head
and come into my eyes,
whisper in my ear,
caress my heart with his quill.
I feel the hand of the muse lightly on my thigh.
I never know when he will take me …
only that he will
as I work
and wait … here
in my writing room.
Sybilla 8/26/08
Arabella*
Dropping slowly in the unknown,
she twirls her sexy spinnerets,
reeling out a silver swing
in dauntless nanometers.
She suffers hunger, thirst,
twisting in the capricious breeze,
waiting for that one small puff
to lift her silken lifeline
to the other side.
Sanctuary.
How did she learn to trust the wind?
Arabella anchors her thread,
pumps her body dry
to build her expensive abode
out of ancient meat,
architectural ken.
Back and forth, round and round
the tightrope walker toils,
prompted by the design of the ages.
She may be tatting
the deterministic subtext of life
into her wispy home.
Ignoring the random acts of predators,
the child with a careless stick,
the evil one with matches,
she may be risking all
to create an existential platform
for her progeny.
She cannot know how this ends;
does not know that we believe
there have always been spiders
hanging in midair;
that our world will disappear
if she does.
I will be reluctant to brush her off my arm,
to pull her lacework from my face,
or sweep it aside, wrecked,
the next time I see the intrepid weaver,
because she knows better than I
how to trust the wind.
Sybilla 3/1/09
*Arabella was a spider who died
In an experiment aboard Skylab 3.
Deadly Metaphor
Desire is a projectile,
a hot hollow point, riding a burst of lust.
Target engaged, it shreds protective layers,
splinters bone, tears a heart apart
as it tumbles and explodes,
igniting fires within another,
extending its own life in flesh.
With the safety always off,
cocked, loaded, hair trigger ready,
a street legal sniper
may squeeze one off for target practice;
another notch on the barrel,
another clay pigeon shattered.
It may start with a fire, a hot muzzle,
the hammer igniting the missile,
hitting an innocent bystander,
just grazing the target,
leaving only a flesh wound.
Sometimes it misfires, fails,
slowing, losing altitude
before it falls to the ground,
a spent bullet.
Sometimes it backfires,
leaving a gunslinger
with an exit wound.
Sybilla
3/13/15 (Friday)
Desert River
A thirsty thing dragged itself here
and died without tears.
It remembered the joyful currents running,
cutting away the debris of the past.
Nature’s pure nurture once lay here
in deep luxurious pools.
But instead of slaked need,
the thirsty one received a once rooted stick impaled
to its neck in sand.
The river flung these rocks forward with her last strength.
Now their faded planes lie here in puddles of flaked mud.
The silt floated on as long as possible
then settled and fanned out at the edges
of an old alluvium.
full of regret, sadness.
The sculptors who carved and molded this water course
have gone elsewhere, forgetting
there was once a torrent here
of passion, urgency, purpose.
There should be a river here.
There really should.
Such is the cruelty of love.
It dies before memory does.
Sybilla October 10, 2016
Finish Line
Pacing strides, void of caring,
is what trauma leaves behind
when all we take from the qualifying heats
are disappointments;
painful memories trailing
back to the starting line.
And sorrow weighs too heavy
in the struggle for endurance.
Pity parches the sour mouths of those
who suffer neglect or beg for mercy;
and exhaustion is the levy
of brave but wretched perseverance.
Hatred burns too hot for the marathon of life,
but forgiveness unveils purgatory.
At the finish line, no one cares
who is victim, who offender.
Love simply lost is the purse of indifference,
Empty distance its plastic trophy.
Sybilla
Ho Ho Host and Hostess
oHosH
Holidays bring a thousand ways
to gift, enjoy and visit.
It’s not so hard to tolerate just once a year
now, is it?
I love to hear: “We’ve missed you, Dear.”
And “Oh how you have grown”!
(If only I was still a child,
that wouldn’t make me moan.)
The tabletops are loaded up
with sugar, fats and goo.
The treats are baked and half the guests
Are wishing they were, too.
The jokes and stories make the rounds
once more to our chagrin.
Oh bless the day when all forget
the nincompoops we’ve been.
Torn Christmas wrap and ribbons
are piled up everywhere
while naughty children fight and fuss
and pull each other’s hair.
We eat together, play and stay
until we’ve made a mess.
The hosts are worn completely out;
tomorrow they will rest.
“No More. That’s it. We’re done”,
we swear. “Next time we’re eating out”!
But come next Fall you know we’ll all
forget what that’s about.
Sybilla11/17/2012
Aunts
There they are in the nursery
tending her young as their own
placing her eggs in waxy cradles
tucking them in for a nap.
Carefully they sweep debris
carry food for the stores
stand watch over their wards
ready in a chemical instant
to whisk the babies out the tunnels
to guarded ground, a new nest.
Don’t tell the aunts the truth about
the queen and destiny
about living in a world of castes
that the doyenne mates freely
and doesn’t have to share her food.
Let them believe, as good aunties do
in providence and family.
Sybilla
9/11/10
