Rose Donaldson
Stats
Pastime trenz pruca
Hometown seattle, washington
job photographer
interests landscape, portrait, travel
Poem Titles
> INVENTORY AT MOMENT 62
> THE PRIEST - BOSTON LIBRARY
> COCKTAIL PARTY
INVENTORY AT MOMENT 62
Intact. Still shiny,
eager. Need a lot.
More to give.
Life less complicated.
Ability to act alone.
Easier, but no place
to warm my feet or complain.
Still laughing,
possibly more bold –
bravery without armor,
no disguises.
Like Japanese landscape:
capturing rudiments,
living in outline.
In danger with every
new brush stroke of
painting outside
proscribed border.
Line wants to go out;
Samurai guard forces it
to remain at inner edge
of each moment.
Good wine getting better.
Watch for vinegar,
too much containment.
Leave room: new feelings,
freshness of experience.
Must remember: everything
always different.
So. settling into
my mother’s face
in the mirror,
eyes still those of
the baby in the picture
-asking: how did I
get in this play, and
will I be good?
I will be old.
stage-managing that
will take all the craft
I have.
________________________________
THE PRIEST - Boston Library
Wisely, he had wisely known
we would not touch.
He walked through me
in the garden, having
pre-judged me, all women --
his cassock artfully deflecting
the fact that, set in his head,
were the eyes of a bookkeeper.
________________________________
COCKTAIL PARTY
The apartment was too bright; the furnishings
Too baroque; and someone burned a sizeable black
Hole in the thick wine carpet, but it was in
The corner, so that was all right.
No one drank too much or said the wrong thing
And a tall dark girl with buck teeth and long
Fingers twirled and twitched to the loud Rhumba
Music and asked everyone if they’d had enough
To drink.
In the far corner, near the window too close to
The fashionable street, a lighted tree blazed
Unnoticed and three businessmen talked warmly,
Smoking cigars which never seemed to wear down,
Their faces ruddy. The women were too sweet,
Too smiling and too bulgy in their expensive
Dresses, and flashed worn sparks with their
Small, shrewd eyes. At twelve, two human beings
(One the host and another just exactly fifty)
Dressed as Santa Claus and Somebody Else and got
A good laugh from everyone but the owners of the
Clothes they’d lavishly borrowed.
No hits, no runs, no drunks, too much Rhumba
Music.. and a soldier who talked theatrically
And in a too deep, too steady and too clear voice
Of the loveliness of women and an Indian giving
Birth alone at the crossing of a road. “The
Stench was much,” he said, and God, if that doesn’t
Apply to the whole damn party, I am not twenty-two,
and I did not watch the lights on the bridge, or
The houses, coming home in the back seat, and
Wonder how they could all have been babies once
And what happened to them inbetween.
