Poems by Colleen Whitley

The Dying Leaves

The leaves looked safely dead upon the tree,
Their veins collapsed as those of crucified
Men, or animals, hung up and dried.
Yet when the wind at last shook them free,
I saw a moist and spreading drop still
Flowing from each freshly broken edge.
I watched the leaves, but when I tried to catch
The falling fragments to see if life still
Flowed from them as from their parent, they rattled
Brown-paper edges against grass stiffened
By frost, and shivered as they skipped beyond
My reach. In starting leaps, they scuttled
To the warmth through the open kitchen door,
Where I found them dead on the polished floor.

Apple Trees in Winter

The skeletons of summer stand
In regimented rows,
Feeling twigs and summer sprouts
Frozen where they used to grow.

Arthur

I sat in mist like this once as a child.
Sir Ector had told me that if a wild
sea bird ever tried to reach the dome of heaven,
he’d crack against it, tumble back, leaving
bloody feathers on the angels’ wings and
holes in the clouds. He’d ruffle sea-blown mist and
where he struck the earth, no moss could grow, for
dream-drawn birds who tried to fly too far
would catch their wings in clouds and soon would find
their feathers dampened and their eyes made blind.
I sat by gannet banks along the coast
and waited on moss-clothed rocks for almost
half a day. I watched the watchless ocean play
lick-tag with the cliffs and rolled the clay
beneath the moss-rocks into balls and threw
them at the cliff-devouring sea who
gobbled them. But then the evening mist seeped
in from rocks and sea and sky and slipped
about the rookeries and over me.
And so I went back home. I could not see
the birds along the banks or in the sky;
I couldn’t see them leave or land and I
was cold and wet and no more quite convinced
where Heaven was, or what. I’ve wondered since
whether either men or birds should ever try
to set such sun-soaked goals and fly so high.

Merlin

I was a wise old man	when he whittled
willow whistles	watched will-o-the-wisps.
But now giddy Guenivere’s	grown more important and
replaced the rhymes and	runes I settled in
his brain. He used to	listen while I
tried to tell him, but	telling him now is
like chanting charms to	children. He’ll listen, but
while he does, his thoughts	dance off with her.
I could, and I would	warn him about her.
If he would hear, I	would warn him that the
whole Table will	tumble down her
spiral staircase	someday and the
peasants and the villeins	from the villages
and hamlets will	come to see a queen
being burned in a	bone-fire like the
witches and the	warlocks who come
from lowly classes	causing trouble in
the rabble, in the	restless landless rabble
for the priests and	for the barons.
But he won’t listen.	I’ve stayed here long enough.
I’ve told him all that I can	tell about the
Table and the tactics and	the trickery of
ruling. I need a	rest. Besides, he’ll never
miss me, probably. Not	me, not till Mordred
comes to claim crown and	kingdom, and then
he’ll know. I tried	to tell him that time, too,
before he saw Bellicent,	before the babies, but
he would go see that	wilful witch. And if
I warned him now, he	likely wouldn’t listen.
There’s no sense in my	staying—still I could
stay and still I would	stay to warn him, if
he would only come	and ask me to.

The Genealogist

I hear them calling me beyond the years,
     beyond the graves,
     beyond the books and records
     beyond the seeming inexhaustible expanse
          of lives.

Their voices come beyond the half-plowed fields,
     and calling birds
     and wrinkled newspapers
          and papers never read
     and ironed clothes
          and clothes untouched by soap
     and wagon ruts
          and ruts rubbed smooth.

Through all the thousand things of their experience
     and mine,
          They call unerringly.

To Robert Welch

Sing a song of suspects,
Pockets full of spies,
Look at all the pinkos
Right before our eyes.

When the files are opened,
See them all appear.
Haven’t we such dainty things
To whisper in your ear?