MARY ANN DIMAND - POEMS

Mary Ann is a confirmed swallow watcher who still has all her own teeth. She maintains that economics and liberal theology were made for each other.

GAMERA SLEEPS
​

​Sunk in stinging dreams,
the vast turtle twirls
a little deeper into the ocean floor.
 
It’s nasty being a hero.
Things bite you.
You’re called to work that shreds
your flesh, chars your hope.
Then you heal. If you heal.
 
Heavy inside his shell,
Gamera dreams himself small again--
but not the turtlet lectured
on a thousand duties,
not those tiny flippers straining toward speed and power.
Now, young again, Gamera is sliding
down slick mud slopes, frolicking upward
in a shower of bubbles, rejoicing
in the lightness of a watery world
that holds him up, that nourishes, that comforts.

HOUSEBOAT IN THE DESERT
​

​Beached indeed. Its cracked
windows gaze north, toward no
water at all. Its hull a dry, cracked tongue.
 
You never know. Once
fathoms swamped this dust. Trilobites
writhed and sharks snapped
at clams. This sand, wet
once. Pressed to stone. Now heat
weights the crumbling land,
sun peels my boat’s painted hide.
 
Soon or late, preparation
rots, hope is flayed, rain
hardens to ash and blows far away.

LEGEND
​

Hush! The man may waken
soon, his cheek twitched, now
alert the bloggers. His pale skin,
dewy and cool, cradles
still-strong muscles 
on his athlete’s frame. That wide, calm
brow, the strong slow heart
hold wisdom and strength. We’re sure.
He’s always been a hero, always
looked like heroes looked, always traveled
on the backs of cheering crowds.
So hush! We wait; he’ll wake.

Outside,
children chalk miracles
with sidewalk cracks
in them, dance and raise
dust in patterns
no one’s seen before
and cheer each other. Make
salads of mulberry leaves
and hedge berries, look
at a sky they’ll swim in.

Women scoop 
dirt and scraps and failures
into clay they mold
into fields, statues, 
homes. They sing
while they work--
wild songs that rise
alone, or twine like vines
that purl the village
and help the hops
to climb. 
 
At dusk, the women
go to watch 
the children, clap
and crow and marvel, 
kiss
the fevered foreheads.
And the village 
comes together 
in a feasting, some,
and others go talk
and eat quietly
in cooler shadows.

Why can’t they be quiet?
The man may waken!
They should wait
for him. Beside him.
How dare they live
as if they were—were
people?
 

ON THE PERSISTENCE OF THE MUSES
​

​ 
“I do not think I’ve ever burned down my literary house.”
 – Dr. Janice M. Bogstad
 

​Who was it who torched
the library at Alexandria, wonder
of a wondering world? No one
wants to claim it. It makes a flaming shame
to stake an enemy to the earth.
 
Horror of horrors, to try to take
a world’s words. And yet words reach papyrus
because it hoards them. No matter
how the ink is spilled, texts spoiled,
despoiled in wiping monkish bums,
we excavate the middens.
In how many deserts
of works banned and burned
have quiet insurgents
tucked the words
they lived through
into cool jars?
Waiting. A time may come
when new hungers
seek those juicy roots
and gnaw.
 
Books have been stashed in coffins
and found to rise again.
 
Even in an eclipse of writing
authorial voices flicker through the paths
of minds and hearts and lungs and fingers.
Though despots would demolish all their fuel,
behold! and hark! and feel!
the words come, and there is light.