Theodora Goss: Poems

Bridget
by Theodora Goss

Bridget is walking beneath the trees
because spring has come.
The small birds flying around her head
burst into song.

As she passes, the roses bloom,
the pink dog roses that nod and sway
as the wind brings the scent of the sea
blowing this way.

Around her hem the children dance,
holding hands in a ring,
as wild and glad and innocent
as lambs in spring.

Bridget, my lovely,
your head is perpetually
crowned with woodland flowers:
bluebells, foxgloves, and columbines,
primroses, cowslips, the dusky velvet
of violets, white stars of anemones
and sunny celandines,
bobbing their blossoms around your sweet face
as you walk through the world while the small birds sing
and the children dance in a laughing ring
because you are the spirit of wonderful spring,
gone too soon but always returning
when we most long for you,
albeit too briefly,
Bridget.

(The image is The Coming of Bride by John Duncan.)

Thoughts in the Roman Baths
by Theodora Goss

In the city of Aqua Sulis, presided over
by Minerva of the Waters, in a corner,
carved into stone predating the Roman city,
are three mysterious figures, a triple deity,
the goddess of the Celts, whose names we no longer
remember. But what the archaeologists tell us
is that she was worshiped, or rather they (being triple),
throughout the Celtic lands from time immemorial,
until the Roman goddess strode in, Minerva,
as arrogant, in her armor, as any centurion,
and took the city for her own. Oh Minerva!
You are such a child beside these ancient figures,
as ancient as the Fates, who predate Zeus.
Perhaps they are the Fates themselves, who formed
the earth and set it floating on the waters
of Night, which bubble up in the blessed springs
in which we bathe ourselves, worshiping the goddess
Minerva Sulis, forgetting that they come
from her, originally, the triple goddess
whose names we have forgotten, yet who holds
our lives in her capable hands from our watery births
until our deaths, and to whose endless streams
we will return, slipping out of our bodies
and into her immensity like fish . . .

(The image is my photograph of the Celtic Triple Goddess at Aqua Sulis.)

Little English Houses
by Theodora Goss

Little English houses,
red and white, white and red.
Somewhere a good child
is laying her head
on a linen pillow,
and hollyhocks bloom
all across the linen,
all around her room,
climbing up the wallpaper
so that she sleeps
in a secret garden,
a secret English garden,
while out the window,
in the garden below,
hollyhocks are growing,
red and white, white and red,
all around the houses,
the little English houses
sleeping in the sunshine,
dreaming in the sunshine,
as in the room above,
softly, gently, deeply,
dreaming of a garden
with hollyhock and roses,
red and white hollyhocks,
roses striped red and white,
smiling as she dreams
of a secret garden,
the little girl sleeps.

(The image is Flowering Hollyhocks by George Baxter.)

What the Oak Tree Said
by Theodora Goss

I have not written a poem
in a long time, she said.
Why not now? said the oak tree.
She sat among its roots, which spread
out over the grass.
In their crevices grew bits of moss,
grass and moss, green on green,
like the oak leaves above, still bright
with spring, and in the branches of the oak
the robins were singing.

She said, but I have not written
a poem in such a long time. I’m not sure
I remember how. The oak tree said,
I am writing poems all the time.
My roots are a poem and the grass is a poem
and the moss is a poem and my leaves are a poem —
look how cleverly I have arranged them along my branches
as they sway in the wind, and the hollow at the bottom
of my trunk, filled with old leaves and darkness,
is a poem, and the sky gray with rain clouds —
and the robins, of course, annoying as they can be,
each of them is a poem.

You are a better writer than me, she said.
Naturally, said the oak.
But try anyway.

(The image is Girl Reading Under an Oak Tree by Winslow Homer.)

Lucy Strange
by Theodora Goss

Lucy Strange went up to town
wearing a raincoat over her nightgown,
carrying a lantern, leading a goat —
she went first by train and then by boat.
She put the lantern on her head.
I am a beacon, Lucy said.

Lucy Strange was the queerest girl —
she had our senses in a whirl.
She turn our reasons upside down —
her tears were laughter, her smile a frown.
We clapped when she came and lamented her going —
all the clocks chimed and the river stopped flowing,

the cats refused to chase the mice,
the hens laid blue eggs, the sun rose twice,
every day was a Saturday —
we went to church but forgot to pray.
Her time with us was all too brief —
we grieved her departure but felt relief.

Lucy Strange, we remember you still.
You stood in your nightgown on top of the hill —
your lantern shone like a star in the night,
you stretched out your arms and then took flight,
rising up to the firmament —
we watched, amazed, as up you went.

And now you shine like the brightest star
and we are back to the way we were —
except that the clocks refuse to chime
and our children only speak in rhyme
and a black goat sings on the roof of the grange —
that is your legacy, Lucy Strange.

(The image is a painting by Wladyslaw Theodor Benda.)

Wild Geese
by Theodora Goss

The cries of the wild geese are spring,
are returning
warmth and growth and light,
are the promise of apples ripening on the branch
and crickets singing in the summer night,
are hope in flight.

Every year I hear them I am older
and yet reborn –
each year is another step closer to the last, and yet
also, somehow, a new dawn,
a new awakening beneath the eternal sky
that arches over us all,
the mother through whose blue body the wild geese
northering call.

(The image is a woodblock print of wild geese by Ohara Koson.)

The Dictator Fears Death
by Theodora Goss

He tried to put his name
on bridges, tunnels, terminals,
in gilded letters carved into the stone
of monuments, insisted he alone
could build the country, could construct
the future, that his fame
would long outlast the memory
of his prison camps, his masked police,
the children that his policies
had starved of air and light,
the general devastation and the blight
of toppled trees, of streams that ran
with waste, the fearful night
of his harsh reign. As long as, painted gold,
his name shone out from pediments,
his face appeared on mountainsides,
his statues filled the public squares,
his portraits hung in galleries.
His omnipresence guaranteed
a kind of immortality.

Alas, how inexorably
history moves on. Amid the rubble
of his triumph, he was laid beneath the only
stone that still bore his name,
where, beneath the loam,
the worms, in their fashion,
celebrated him.

(The image is Entrance to the Temple of Luxor by Louis Haghe.)