Martin Willitts (3 poems)
Judith Slaying Holofernes
(Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1610)
(The Book of Judith was probably written during the Second Temple Period)
We cannot talk about water without mentioning knives,
or the migration of flamingoes over the marshes.
We cannot open our mouths without spitting flames.
Words bring their own baskets of meaning.
All of this is waking from beauty into revenge.
This is not the better angels you’ve heard about.
We cannot hear the bedsheets being tortured,
because the sun is incorrigibly perfect
like wasps in the garden, dying off in early fall.
Every negative comment is too human.
Every deaf ear is a barometer ignoring the season.
Every moment is tainted by light.
Knives only have one purpose in life:
the edge of silence,
ruffling cobalt blue dress movement.
This is white retribution, in rolled-up sleeves,
putting you back into work, hacksawing
with no delicacy because none was given.
Everlasting
The everlasting is a vague promise of what will happen
beyond this life, this path of green and water and light.
Every year, I enjoy the spring purple violets,
the quizzical bees following memory, the rapture
of Cataula’s one-week white flower, the scarlet cardinals,
the breathlessness of yellow tanagers that never returned
again, the untouched grotto with pure water, the singing
of a child on the other side of a fence.
The Day is Speechlessly Broken
my father scuffling
on a deer trail winding
through white pine
into the shockingly
beautiful birds
manifesting trees
their music
he will never hear
I sign songbirds
signed this
is music
Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is "Unfolding Towards Love" (Wipf and Stock).