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Wendy E. Braun – This Existence

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Drafting: Sandalwood Saints

-I am working through the drafting process on this one. When I write, I like to work through a few drafts, playing with perspective, tone, and structure. Right now this poem is going through a bit of a fragmented phase. In this version, I am trying to maintain the lyrical qualities while discerning the places in which something more needs to occur.

Rise to drink the elixir of  Kailas before the first rays of dawn forever alter it.

Chant from texts and divine a time before the printed page demanded a certain weight, and divinity rose from the universe within.

Bathe in oils of amber and the sandalwood saints who wax awakenings of ascended masters.

Then walk to your own precipice with each step offer a mantra of awareness.

***

She rises in the early hours to drink of Kailas before the red of dawn forever alters it.

She chants from texts in a tongue divining a time before the printed page, demanded a certain weight, and transcendence arose from the universe within.

Alone, she bathes in oils of amber and the sandalwood saints wearing awakenings of ascended masters.

Walking to her precipice, a pause and then with each step she offers a mantra of awareness.

 

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Grieve Like the Red Tin Soldier

By: Wendy E. Braun

The taste in the cotton folds
of the pillowcase,
damp drool stained
scent of unwashed hair and sweat.

A cry for something,
someone or maybe
just the high hopeless notes
that fall in alleys
like trees in that empty forest,
ripples of a voice
that can’t be placed…

Only the weight of it,
like an old tin soldier,
whose red paint is
chipping in your hands.

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The Age of the Facade

Sometimes the modernity of things surprises me. As if I fell into this world of cool colors. Earth tones providing for a new sense of elegance when the primordial nature of things has been completely lost.

We place trees strategically, contemporary warmth derived from designs birthed centuries ago on factory floors. Iron and wood, and the color of rust pretend to suggest a legacy of use.

         Everyone should have a stone, to hold and cradle within one’s hand. Or so was told as a child, but this is the Age of the Facade.

Language returns daily to forms that would recall the lost languages comprehensible with new appreciations for dots and dashes and misappropriations of meaning. It is as though we are standing on the brink of a digression into babel, a modern age, in which all things are recycled and reformed.

         Something must be lost in this process, I am sure of this,
and perhaps, also        a stone in one’s hand.

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When Ash was Falling in Dawson City

By: Wendy E. Braun

I.
When the burning began
along the Yukon
and we had to wash the boat,

“Dust and only dust” she said,
as the ash fell like snow
and the forest continued to burn.

II.
Perhaps, when only dust remains
we’ll find the bones
of the mastodons, and a tusk

But for now the forest falls
around four bare feet, and a pair of extra shoes
hers and mine without direction.


*”Dust and only dust” belongs to my dear poet friend, Candace Butler

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Stolen Line

By: Wendy E. Braun

I was walking by the pond on my way to town.

Mind you, it was not some lovely Midwestern pond,

with willow trees, and frogs resting in the muddied grasses.
I know nothing of ponds like that, that is

outside of stories that belong to people

who never mind waiting for the breeze,

or so I’m told.

No, I know of ponds, and rivers and oceans

that can only be cleansed through memories,
memories comprised of lost shoes

and double dog dares, and uneven ground

and salvaged railroad ties meant to buffer a spill.

This pond is stitched with memory,

as I walk by and think what a strange quality
to attribute to water, but still each thread has its
boundary or is one, the eye its channel.

So this pond, which is hardly more than a puddle
is wrapped up with my father fighting a flood
from the neighbor’s yard, and a railroad tie

trying to protect my new swing set from the onset,
while grandpa just laughs and I sail my toy boat.

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