Ronna Leon Poetry
Poetry
SIMPLE QUESTION
"Where are you off to?"
The library.
How often I make that reply,
an answer easier
than explaining
I'm off to find adventure, mystery, explanations, stories,
answers, QUESTIONS, distraction, solace, advice.
I need hard facts, fantasy, history, science and art.
I want to learn brush painting.
I've a desire to housebreak my cat.
At my library I can meet both the living and the dead,
In a quiet place, where no one questions what I'm doing
lurking among their carefully crafted pages.
Oh, I'm off to the library, you bet.
I'm off to the library, and yes, I can bring
you back a couple of books.
"Anything in particular?"
Ronna Leon, Benicia Poet Laureate 2010-2012
100 years of Library Services Celebration
Benicia Public Library, August 2010
DRESSED
A woman like other women,
breasts, belly, shoulder, arms, legs.
The hollows at her neck.
A woman with active fingers,
yielding flesh.
Covered.
A woman gone.
She left behind this kimono
with fields of precious threaded flowers,
flocks of golden birds,
swirling seas, cloudy heavens.
These once adorned her
young body - old body,
her.
Did she sigh in wonder?
We other women do,
passing the exhibit's glass case
where her gown now hangs.
A woman like other women,
clothed in beauty
for their beauty.
© Ronna Leon 2009
CONUNDRUM
Maybe it isn't one thing
but another.
Maybe the time isn't right.
The baby's been thrown out
with the bath water.
The black hole sucked up the light.
Caution tape's always bright yellow.
Chalk marks where the bodies lie.
The front door is triple locked.
The clue is hidden in plain sight.
Maybe truth IS stranger than fiction.
Maybe the postman rings twice.
If I had to place bets,
if I want to win big,
if facts can be trusted,
if I've got this right,
further research proves necessary
far into the night.
© Ronna Leon 2009
THE POEM THAT GOT AWAY
The one about the first rain evaporated
in the clear day that followed.
Another, cloaked in sacred vestments,
fled during the sermon
(no pencil to be found in the pew cardholder).
The poem that started while mixing meat loaf
was soon baked beyond recognition.
Perhaps it is the superficiality of my poetic impulse.
Perhaps my muse has attention deficit disorder.
Perhaps the lessons of the poems I've read and heard
suffocate the tender upstarts:
No poems on spring, none about dead mothers,
nothing on the living Christ, no poems on depression,
PLEASE--
(dime-store cards cover these).
Don't write on war, unfair death, the dire economic times,
domestic woes, sons and daughters,
PRETTY PLEASE.
All the poems I didn't write
may prove a blessing.
Easy come, easy go,
that's my poem for you.
© Ronna Leon 2007
A LIFETIME AGO
A lifetime ago
the pot boiled over, the dust bunnies ran away,
joining the general domestic strike.
Mr Mop sulked in a gray thready heap,
the walls marked with his despond like a prisoner's cell.
The garbage collected in colorful piles.
The rubber seals of Mason jars melted in the garbage
that summer.
The world did not end -
although it might have-
a lifetime ago, it is hard to remember clearly-
except for walking away,
without the dish, without a spoon,
leaving the sharp knife on the counter.
© Ronna Leon 2010
NEWSPAPER
I hear the thwack that signals its arrival
On my Driveway.
I do not rise. Do not hurry, as is my habit,
To spread wide the soft pages like a proud bird
Upon my table.
Do not make the dark coffee that usually flavors
The mysteries of important events.
I lie in the morning cool
And listen to birds squabble in the
Full blooming trees.
I collect the sounds of window opening,
Dripping faucet, humming refrigerator, husband snores.
I picture the newspaper waiting there,
Warming, browning, finally crisping, fading
In the righteous sun, unread.
I tell myself this news is already dead,
The common history we muck through,
Somehow.
I do not want their news, their lives, their grief,
Crushing my fragile spring morning.
When my husband leaves for work, he takes the paper
With him.
He asks, as he leans down to get it.
"You don't mind?"
No. No, I do not mind.