Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets and on occasion, writers from other areas. This week’s featured poet is Lesley Constable.
Constable is a US/UK poet and painter. Most often linked to the US Beat Poets, like them, she lives in Mexico where she first gained recognition as an open mic poet. She said as a painter, her work is identified as visionary or transcendental, which could equally describe her poetry. She’s also a dancer. Constable worked as an arts journalist/art critic, art instructor and art gallery curator.
She is awaiting publication of her second volume of poetry, "A House without Walls: existential journeys and love poems to Mexico," this Fall. Her first volume, "Entry Point: poems of time, place, being," is available online at major booksellers’ sites. This poem is called "That which watches and waits."
Stick the fork in to see if it is done. It pierces that which was whole,
the substance seeps from within to without, only if you flinch
Without this, without this waiting, I am nothing, suspended animation,
my lot in life. The Black Panther there in front of me, there before
me, considered, not in form, but as symbol, the emblem of freedom,
its stealth noted, integrity known, known that, in the hold of its
gaze, it would cool you, hold you steady, hold
you cool and dark and certain and, cool YOU, the heated animal
of you, look you in the eye, hold your gaze unflinching and know you,
this deeply, as it knows the insides of things that speak through
the tail that will twitch the time, as it ponders you, then the flick,
considering you, anew, assessing
You know this and still you wait, as does he, watching you, and what
would this be? what would this release be for you, for him, if the
teeth broke flesh and punctured you, the fluid running and running
out of you, while the clouds above, churn, still the clouds
above churning still. You hold to your own gripping, as you never
have, the action ready still, in you, and holding, holding still, just in case,
that which you know that will have you, that will have you, climbs up
and up, in you, to a height at which you can see. And you see.
And if you are not careful, all the while you heed the gaze, you transform
into something, almost not, and if you look hard enough we and
you are transformed into that which you already know.
And I stand before you, him, myself purely, waiting as I face the gaze
unblinking, ready for the what of it, this moment, that might happen, the
could of it, the would of it to have you, climbs as myth, the danger
of tooth and claw, as myth, only if you flinch.
Lesley Constable©April 11, 2022
