OPUS
Martin Willitts Jr
Table
of Contents:
Opus 1
Opus 7
Opus 9
Opus 13
Opus 19
Opus 21
Opus 23
Opus 25
Opus 27
Opus 28
Note: Opus is a classical
music term in which the music is thematically connected, but can be played in
order, out of order, some of the pieces, or all of the pieces.
Photograph by: Martin
Willitts Jr.
Opus 1
In blur-blast-haze of high
humidity-heat
are sizzling insect
noises,
active in scorch-purge.
The insects' happiness is
everyone’s misery —
the heat is searing,
visible like blue flame,
angry scar-sunburned.
Dark unknown paths eat
scraps of sunlight —
waiting to die, bidding
their time to claim light.
In this startling new,
worrisome weather
there is little relief.
Rain shrivels before it
arrives —
it is all flash and no
substance.
How many of us are
prepared for what happens next?
Opus 7
An unhurried stream over a
small rush of rocks,
smoothes the stones into
eggs.
Listen to trees bud and
rasp
in red, torrid breath.
Beware of the inherent
danger of hidden things.
Opus 9
Rains scour the plains,
rubs them down
until the bone of earth is
exposed.
Lightning splits into
flame,
brush becomes inflammatory
words,
incendiary devices.
Birds collapse out of
storms,
clasping their wings.
What is going on with this
wildness?
Rowers bring their canoes
of darkness to shores,
step onto the surface
tension of loss,
nod to each other, let
us, too, ignite.
Unspeakable actions call
for concentrated silence;
blatant disregard is as
common
as snapped green branches.
Opus 13
In
the green half-shadows
among
thick clumps of hawthorn leaves
there
is a vapor of people.
I
know, soon, I will join them.
I
will leave through air
into
another place.
When
light is pulled away,
promises
our ancestors made
will
surely have forgotten.
Opus 19
It
gets dark early, swallowing the final call of sundown.
When
travelers discover they are nowhere,
it
is too late. The dark devours them too.
I
found their trace, a postcard declaring,
wish you were here.
When
I read that, I started packing.
That
crazy vanishing road
comes
to remind us how truly lost we are.
We
always neglect what matters the most.
Opus 21
Blackened
corpses of stars are going nova.
All
day, it has been crackling with heat insects.
I
say, it is God’s voice telling us something important.
The
heat grinds us for not listening.
We
cannot seem to leave well enough alone.
Our
futile attempts to improve or streamline life
only
makes it worse.
Sheet
music’s passages of wildness — briars
and
milkweed sends music into trumpets of wind —
this
melody heals stunted saplings, brings Light
to
darkened air, finding cures for emptiness —
Light!
— come fill us! Heal the forgotten!
Opus 23
All day, a continent of snow fell as apples
from the rim of the whitewash sky
until the ridgeline was erased.
Still, Nuthatches were shaking the wind
with their song.
The violence of snow cannot subdue them.
Opus 25
There is a precise
sizzling
scattered in the lavender
fields below
the cedar waxwings
suspended in air like
butterfly kites.
It grinds like a person
making a key.
It is locust in the
heat-sweat afternoon.
It is heavy-duty sandpaper
rubbing against high-speed
sandpaper.
It is voices shattering against
the limits of love.
It is someone consumed
with curses.
The heat has a musty
smell,
worse than wet fur; like
drowned fish
on the sandy edge of a
retreating river.
This is when God opened a
window in the sky
and the world was
illuminated
with the same blue of
thermal hot springs
and the odd golden shade
of their earthen hole.
Opus 27
If God took a branding
iron to the sky,
would you understand the
message?
If a warning skimmed
across paddling in a canoe,
would you look for
exemptions in the margins?
If hurt was a
white-crested wave,
what would stir it more,
what would split open wounds?
Mistreated people will
become Tongrass wildflowers,
their heads still bent to
the ground from shame.
Where is the justice in
that?
What is this in the
unsettling blur descending?
Opus 28
In
the thin membrane of a leaf
there
is a vein
carrying
breath
to
the tip of a snag
hundreds
of climbing feet above
like
a forbidden fruit
on
the edge of wind current
like
the partial face of God
asking
the reason for pollution
one
wrong answer
could
lead to a rock slide
Copyright 2015, Martin Willitts Jr.
Copyright 2015, Martin Willitts Jr.
About the Author
Martin Willitts Jr is a
retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 11 Pushcart
and 11 Best of the Net awards. He provided his hands-on workshop “How to
Make Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012
Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award ; co-winner
of the 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry
Contest; winner of the 2013 “Trees”
Poetry Contest; winner of the 2014
Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest.
He has over 20 chapbooks
including "Swimming in the Ladle of
Stars" (Kattywompus Press,2014),“City
Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2014), “The Way Things Used To Be” (Writing Knights Press, 2014), and “Late All Night Sessions with Charlie “the
Bird” Parker and the Members of Birdland, in Take-Three” (A Kind Of a
Hurricane Press, 2015). He has 8 full length poetry books including ), national
ecological award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth
Press, 2013), “Before Anything, There Was
Mystery” (Flutter Press, 2014), and “Irises,
the Lightning Conductor For Van Gogh's Illness” (Aldrich Press, 2014).
His forthcoming books
include “Martin Willitts Jr, Greatest
Hits” (Kattywompus Press), “How to Be
Silent” (FutureCycle Press), “God Is
Not Amused With What You Are Doing In Her Name” (Aldrich Press).
These poems are from his
collection of other numbered “Opus” poems which have appeared in the following
magazines (some under different titles): Big
River Poetry Review, Blue Heron
Review, Kentucky Review, Literature Today, Love Notes (anthology), Moon
Magazine, Page & Spine, Poppy Road Review, and Seven Circles Press.
Powerful poetry!
ReplyDelete