THE DANCER ON THE LEOPARD ROAD

—an ekphrastic poem after DCastro's The Dancer

The eye of the sun leopard follows the dancer,
her saguaro arms raised high, the oculi, the false eyes,

like oilspots on the road, follow her every move,

while ox-eyed daisies sway in the aqua air 

filled with dreams of red jalopies of another era 

that take to the skies like a swarm of bees 

seeking a new home on the horizon. 

The open road disappears into the distance 

mountains pierce the sky, letting all the air out 

until we droop like flat tires waiting for a bicycle pump

to clock a little more mileage under our belts. 

The hazel-eyed sun and its sunspots—beauty marks—

watch us as the exuberant dancer cartwheels up the road. 

But there are also ghost dancers on the plains. 

A woman carries a parcel while her sisters rise up 

like a dense winter ground fog hiding in the rushes. 

And the dancer on the leopard spotted road 

with her three legs, and starburst chamise,

is prancing like a runaway circus pony, 

while spinning vortices or black holes 

are waiting to draw us all in.

6/7/24 CPITS workshop with Jessica Cardenas Wilson

HORSES IN SNOW

Two dark horses in shaggy winter coats

stamp their feet in anticipation,

seeking an escape from the bed of snow. 

The mountains fold into the valley like fitted sheets. 

The soughing conifers shake their bows free,

spring delayed with no chance of surcease. 

The hardwood fence is a bridge for small rodents 

to cross the blanket of frozen ground. 

The horses pace, each in opposite directions 

as if on a treadmill to move the seasons along. 

They’ve beaten a trail in the bauchy ice,

eagerly await their hay, but it is late again, 

and they worry the fence line as if urging it 

to spring into action, knowing they can’t dig down 

to the dry grasses buried below snowline.

4/4/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

MEZZALUNA

A brown child stands at attention 

with her long, dark hair nailed to the wall 

in a reverse sunburst, or an implosion.

She resembles the night studied with stars. 

Her smile reaches all the way to her toes. 

She doesn’t yet know that she is on display.

Will always be judged by the blade.

4/2/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

OUT OF SEASON

Once upon a time I bought a princess pumpkin, 

more gourd than orange with salmon red crenelations.

We were waiting for a brace of horses 

to take us to the ball. I had no gown, no glass slippers, 

but soot covered the ground dark as night. 

The Uber horses never arrived. 

They were booked for a more lucrative fairytale. 

So they sent an Easter bunny the color of coal.

Instead of whisking me away, he set to 

eating the seeds, leaving a pile of black eggs 

perhaps as punishment for calling him last minute.

Prince Charming was running late and sent Jack instead. 

But he has two left feet and ate Englishmen for breakfast.

Fairy Godmother was sleeping it off in the corner 

muttering how someone had mixed up her spells 

and everything was coming out all wrong. 

The world had turned to ashes. Needing a scapegoat, 

she blamed the long shadows of crows loitering in the car park.

No one was going to get out of this carnival dead or alive.

4/1/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

MAYDAY, MAYDAY

I do love a good parade and a procession.
There’s a lamplit parade down by the harbor, 

Victorian women and children all dressed in white 

circle the lake carrying Chinese paper lanterns lit with candles,

the trail snakes on for miles. What are they celebrating? 

A Mayday parade? Suffragettes? A ghost army on the move? 

From the wrought iron balcony two men look on,

they flex their biceps with their sleeves rolled up,

as if the muggy evening were asking for trouble. 

2/14/24 Molly Fisk PaD

CABARET

Vanity, thy name is Peacock standing on a vanity. 

Well, actually the peacock is preening himself 

in front of the mirror in a public restroom, 

possibly at a park, but at least he chose the men’s room. 

It could be worse. Maybe he was avoiding the long loo lines.

He admires himself and his tres chic body double,

never taking on his reflection like some birds I know. 

No head-banging against the glass like that chickadee 

I finally had to capture to give him a time out 

before he broke his beak in a testosterone-induced rage.

The peacock’s long tail is like a ballgown train, 

perhaps he is planning to attend the Oscars for best of show. 

Or he’s an exotic dancer escaped from the Folies Bergère. 

He’s got the long legs perfect for the role. But this is not Paris.

Why he chose that place to admire himself and preen, 

I suspect it is something we will never know.

2/13/24 Molly Fisk PaD

WORK HORSE, DAWN RUN

Seagulls frantically circle the trawler at dawn, 

hoping for a handout while the dark sky broods, 

threatening rain, but the morning sun 

ignites the surface of the sea with an amber fire. 

The Sea Farmer chugs south towards the open sea, 

or perhaps he’s headed to Tomales Bay or Bodega Harbor 

while the landfolk sleep sound in the coastal hills, 

recumbent as a woman tangled up in sheets, 

and no one in the houses is awake. 

All the dark windows of the soul are closed,

dreaming of an open sea.

2/11/24 Molly Fisk PaD

FOUR STARLINGS

In the photograph, four speckled starlings 

still in their baby fuzz, congregate, 

their shadows aligned to the sun. 

This is how murmuration begins, like that. 

Soon they will take to the sky and dance on the wing, 

following an inner music only they can hear 

as they pulse and weave at dusk 

while we listen to the thrumming of feathers 

beating out a percussion in the air. 

Nothing prepares you for the sound, 

it’s something you have to witness at least once, 

to see those unpredictable sentinels queue up 

for a rave in the sky, as dressing a prayer 

for the wind.

2/10/24 Molly Fisk PaD

SELF PORTRAIT AS A SEA URCHIN

It’s all in the exoskeleton, where divergence occurs. 

Or what makes us different from the others. 

How we reshape our inner landscape to fit our vision. 

Someone posted a psychology test 

where the beginning of a maze dead-ended. 

Nowhere to go, as if offering a conundrum 

was beneficial to teach children to think different.

But I learned from that playbook the hard way 

because I can’t help but think outside the box. 

So I went in the exit and worked my way back

to the center, not knowing it was the answer. 

And I thought of how we present ourselves in our finery. 

Call it armor if you must, so as not to let anyone in,

or that urge to catch a glimpse of our fictitious selves, 

in our attempts to hide from what is in front of us.

2/9/24. Molly Fisk PaD.

GRAZING IN STARK BEAUTY, MONTGOMERY PASS, NV

A band of mustangs grazes 

in high mountain meadows, 

ignoring the man resting against his motorcycle. 

To each his own, horsepower is horsepower, 

even when it’s twice removed from beauty. 

The granite range the continental divide 

dreams of the snow that will paint 

the alpine meadows in white.

The weary sagebrush bend their heads,

grizzled before their time, 

scud clouds portending snow.

2/8/24 Molly Fisk, poem a day

Full moon bridge

The medieval bridge built in a half circle meets itself full circle in the middle of the placid river. It could be Tibet, it could be Italy, or Scotland. Once I saw a perfect reflection of Kelvin Bridge down at the river bank. 

The shore lined with hypodermic needles tied us to this century. Go down to the river and flirt with death, seeking a path to nirvana that will take you down. The circle of Kelvin Bridge and river contemplates itself in a wilderness out of time with the mean streets of Glasgow. 

Meanwhile in Tibet, the photo is of a primitive cow and her calf follow their owner across an old bridge, still standing. He should be from another era with his bamboo hat and palm frond rain cape. He carries the harness yoke for her on his right shoulder. She needs no lead line to know that they are going home.

Once I crossed the Brig o’ Doon in Alloway, a pure arc across the river. Someone had strewn red carnations on the cobbled footpath. There is a new bridge for cars, but here time stops and lets no one pass. 

The herringbone pattern of cobbles was laid to confuse and thwart witches, a drunken Tam O’Shanter on the run. Well done, Cutty Sark.The creatures of the night cannot cross the water so they sulk and wait for the poet. While he had the DTs, Rabbie Burns taunted too many thirsty warlocks looking for the keystone. Not to mention Nannie, who caught the tail end of the horse.

2/7/24 Molly Fisk, poem a day, OK, so it’s not a poem.

FALLOW DEER, ABANDONED HOUSE

And why wouldn’t a fallow deer 

jump through the open window of a building 

with paint crazed like the melting ice sheets 

of Greenland and Antarctica?

The lower four square windows are gone.

Maybe the buck sailed through the open window 

to get to the center of things, a portal, 

his spots, so like stars guiding the way. 

Adobe walls, a skin of plaster lime 

fashioned in the style of wainscotting. 

They say a wild bird in the house portends a dream. 

Where is he going? Someone said 

it’s a Wyeth kind of window, 

a painted dream remembered in half light,

forgotten by dawn.

2/6/24 Molly Fisk, poem a day

MACY’S DAY PARADE, 1969

Two young girls dawdle at the bay window 

anticipating the big Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, 

but at the last moment, turn their backs to the window, 

to face the photographer forever trapped in black & white, 

while a 3-story Snoopy balloon photobombs the image. 

The downtown skyline, opulent as a paste necklace, 

embraces the heaving bosom of the sky. 

What did they find so interesting in the living room? 

Canvas cushions line the window bench, 

an old wooden steamer trunk, relic of a bygone era 

of steamships and luxury liners,

turned into a chic coffee table,

that will no longer sail abroad to Egypt or the Continent, 

is docked in a walk-up apartment, 

strewn with glossy books offering distant vistas 

that no one will look at. Places they’ll never go. 

Snoopy dressed as an astronaut, moons the crowd,

takes that first giant leap into the future.

2/5/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

FRUITING BODIES

Budding like ripening cherries on stalks, 

a colony of slime mold raises cerise orbs skyward, 

holding aloft the next generation, small suns,

while droplets of water reflect a slippery realm 

of fruiting bodies so like a family portrait 

of Chihuly sculptures in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel. 

They gamble, and grow a backbone to greet the storm.

2/4/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

AEOLIAN WIND

If you must yield, always yield to a whim 

because it’s a secret your heart admires. 

At the top of the ridge, it will hold you to it, 

show you your heart’s desire, even though the skies 

are laden with dark clouds, and the trees 

gossip about the upcoming storm. 

Hog wire fence tipped with strands 

of barbwire dazzled with rain

is for sheep, or horses, not for cattle 

who will push their way through it.

But the wires play an atonal melody 

with the aeolian wind.

2/3/24 Molly Fisk’s Poem a Day

ONDINE’S REALM

That painting of drowning Ophelia at the Tate 

always haunted me, even in sleep. 

As a child I had nightmares of tsunamis 

or swimming the Australian crawl 

up the back roads after school.

Yeah, most people have flying dreams. 

Mine were always couched in subliminal terms, 

stranded somewhere between air and water.

When the tsunamis engulfed me, 

I discovered I could breathe underwater. 

Sometimes my safety raft was a shoe, the flat, girly kind. 

I was too young to read symbolism into my dreams, 

but I loved merging with the elements,

in the bathtub where everything was fish-eyed,

but after I nearly drowned, my grandmother dragged me 

down the road to Barbano's salt water pool, 

at 25 cents a lesson. I was an 8-bit swimmer.

That summer, I circled neighborhood pools 

seeking a baptism between air and water.

I gawped at pools, slipping in when no one was looking.

When I took to snorkeling, in the tropics,

I couldn’t get enough of that underworld realm 

where the sky and sun were distant wavery thoughts, 

the world I inhabited was painted anew.

Did Monet think about Ondine’s slippery realm 

as he painted canvases of waterlilies 

large enough to fill the imagination?

2/2/24 Molly Fisk’s Poem a Day

VENICE BEACH

My grandmother always said,

Never turn your back on the ocean. 

I learned that it was a seething monster 

riptides whisked you away to the great beyond. 

I learned to swim late, but water was a siren call. 

I had found my element. Small water dragon.

My grandmother, who taught me to count the waves,

tried to swim at Sutro Baths. It never took.

She never trusted the water. I was fearless. 

Even at ten, riptides whisking me out didn’t scare me. 

When I visited my mother one summer in Venice Beach, 

I spent every waking hour in the water. 

She had an apartment right on the boardwalk.

She slept all day, went out by night, 

leaving me in charge of my baby brother. 

But the mornings were mine alone.

There was never any food in the house 

so I ate cream of wheat until the box was empty. 

The taste of brown sugar and butter 

still takes me back to those days. 

Lately, I’ve returned to that sweet elixir. 

Call it a second childhood, it invokes 

those sandy southern California beaches, 

misted mornings, and the ocean, whispering, 

huge outsider waves urging me onward, out to sea, 

no strangely cheerful Pikachu offering a life-raft.

Just the raw power of the waves 

and the liminal horizon urging me onward.

2/1/24 Molly Fisk’s Poem a Day

GHOST SHIPS

A toxic desert with abandoned fleets of ghost ships

A herd of white camels, like displaced whitecaps, 
seeking refuge from the grueling desert heat,
slumber in the shadows of rusted ghosts freighters
resting on the bottom of what once was the Aral Sea,
a sea so vast, that Alexander the Great couldn’t cross it,
disappeared within a generation. For Soviet cotton.

3/11/23

Her 100th birthday

They were running late as usual, no place to park, the streets were rimed with white SUVs and oversized white trucks. They found a doghole down the street to squeeze their rusted brown sedan into a parking spot with a little elbow grease, and some discreet bumper kissing. 

The woman’s heels clicked a rapid staccato on the sidewalk as they hurried toward the house. The kids dragged their shoes on the cement, slowing her down. Late again, she thought. Late, she hated the abrupt accusatory bark of the word. Her mother said that she will be late for her own funeral.

The front door was open wide, the party was in full swing. Folks wandered in, carrying tinfoil covered dishes, and the womenfolk headed toward the kitchen to ease their burden. The menfolk made a beeline for the coolers lining the porch to ease their discomfort, taking solace in the chilled brown necks of the bottles nestled in their hands. Their empty hands sought simple comfort as they gazed out, talking of the weather.

In the living room center stage was a shimmering bouquet of black and gold helium balloons proclaiming a hundred years of living. They squealed and chattered amongst themselves like young girls as they swayed on the air currents. Two clear balloons had gold starfish printed on their bellies. A backdrop curtain of black kelp undulated and swayed like cabaret dancers. The fat 100 was minted in gold. 

People gathered in tight clumps, or drifted into other constellations, moving like the tides from conversation to conversation. The air conditioner hummed a monotone song, the chink of glasses, and orphaned fragments of conversation mingled and tangled into a pastiche.

The old woman, whose birthday they were honoring, sat in the wheelchair, her claw-like hands, gripping the steel arms, as if she were about to rise, but they all knew that would never happen. She had been confined to her metal chariot ever since the fall. She didn’t want presents. She said she had enough, she didn’t need anything more.

A broken hip at that age was a death sentence. You could see how the tumble took its toll. A precursor of things to come. But nobody wanted to look that closely. She thought how the monotonous days rolled on and on like an endless soap opera. But today was different, her hair was freshly styled, her nearly new clothes unstained, and she smiled radiantly, glad to see her clan gathered around her on this momentous occasion of her hundredth birth.

THE RAPTURE OF THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE

While I watched the birds flit in the skewed rafters of Scheve Jan,

Oude Kerk, my friend pointed to a worn inscription on the stone floor.

I got down on my hands and knees in order to read it,

and shrieked, as I was sprawled atop a Petri dish, the graveslab 

of the father of microbiology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 

a draper who perfected the loupe and the aquatic microscope.

He, who discovered kleine diertjes, cavorting wee beasties, 

animalcules frolicking in the rainwater and in the canals of Delft—

delven means to dig, and so he delved a canal into the obscure arts.

He was the first to witness unnamed creatures of an unknown world—

paramecia, protozoa & spermatozoa—I don’t even want to go there.

In winter light, the church was too dark for my camera to record,

I needed spectacles to see. But at that moment my feet 

(& knees) gave me a more pious vision. I was so enthralled,

I overlooked the plaque of that other master of ultramarine shadow 

and light, I came too late to see—Vermeer, and his camera lucida, 

but at a vlooienmarkt in front of City Hall, I found antique Delft tiles 

painted with dragonflies, and a beatific saint rising above the marsh.

9/27

Observationes microscopicae drawn by Antoni Leeuwenhoek, 1682 Wiki