Patricia Fargnoli
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Patricia Fargnoli was the NH Poet Laureate from 2006 to March, 2009 and is the author of five collections of poetry. Her latest book is Duties of the Spirit ( Tupelo Press, 2005) won the 2005 Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Poetry. Her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999) was awarded the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award judged by Mary Oliver. Her latest manuscript, Then, Something will be published Fall, 2009 by Tupelo Press.
Pat, a retired social worker has been the recipient of a Macdowell Colony fellowship. Twice a semifinalist for The Discovery the Nation Award., she has published widely in literary journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, North American Review, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Cimarron Review, Margie, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and The Massachusetts Review. She’s received the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She’s taught at the Frost Place Poetry Festival, The Frost Place Teacher’s Conference and at the NH Institute of Art, and currently teaches privately and for the Lifelong Learning program, at Keene State College. A member of the NH Writer’s Project and a Touring Artist for the NH Art’s Council, she resides in Walpole, NH.
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August 7th, Storm
You stood at the window, watching sky wash an algaed light
over a town made heavy by three day’s formidable heat.
What would come? Already, clouds massed--slight fall of rain.
In my body, fear-- not full-bloom but something
readying the cells, blood’s small acceleration,
storms encoded in our genes: tribes huddled in heaving tents,
gods tearing up their alleys, deer in the brush, shriek of the crow,
cataclysms that formed the stones.
Half past four, the torrents broke over square and steeple,
streets of closed windows.
Wind revved to a wild ferocity, sky drummed with steady thunder,
lightning flooded the room like a gone-mad moon.
Dinner on the stove, nothing could save us now--we unplugged our lives,
took the howling dog into our bed, let the universe have its will.
first published in Umbrella
Prepositions Toward a Definition of God
Beneath of course the sky,
in the sky itself,
over there among the beach plum hedges,
over the rain and the beyond and
beyond the beyond of,
under the suitcases of the heart,
from the back burners of the universe.
Here inside at the table, there outside the circus,
within the halls of absence,
across the hanging gardens of the wind,
between the marshland sedges, around the edges
of tall buildings going up
and short buildings coming down.
Of energy and intelligence,
of energy-- and if not intelligence then what?
Ahead of the storm and the river, behind the storm and the river.
Prior to the beginning of dust, unto the end of fire.
Above the wheelbarrows and the chickens.
Underneath the fast heart of the sparrow,
on top of the slow heart of the ocean--
against the framework of all the holy books.
Despite the dogmas that rain down on the centuries.
Concerning the invisible, and unnamable power,
in spite of the terror
considering the spirit,
because of something in the body that wants to be lifted.
Because if not God, then what in place of
near the firebombed willow,
beneath the quilt that tosses the dead to the sky,
beside the still waters and the loud waters
and among the walking among?
first published in "The Massachussets Review"
Still Water
-- "what times are these when a poem about trees is almost a crime because it contains silence against so many outrages."
(Brecht)
And why not silence?
Ahead of me, Goose Pond parts pale water
and my canoe slides through into June sun, cathedral quiet,
soft plums of cloud.
A thin gauze of rain stalls over Mt. Monadnock.
This is the way I drift
from each skirmish with the world
to the diplomacy of light
as it flares off the water,
flickers among the flute-notes
of birds hidden in the leaning birches.
Would you condemn me?
I’ve already held the old bodies of grief
long past morning; leave them
to the ministrations
of the dirt-borers
who work what is finished back into the earth.
Some atrocities are beyond redemption--
you know them already--
the world will be the world no matter.
I want the blinding silver of this small pond
to stun my eyes,
the palaver of leaves to stop my ears.
Necessary Light, Utah State University Press, 2000, (first published in Poetry)
