Two Poems

Spam Mail Has Sent Me a Poem
Little ravel of words meant to fool the SPAM Police

with their vigilant eyes for body parts and unseemly behavior.
Today it sent me a snowcup and a moonflow.

And I remembered the cups we made as children,
snow hardening in our palms, drizzled by our

grandmothers with real syrup from Vermont
bought from a roadside stand next to dripping maples.

Not often did we get snow heavy enough and still clear
of bird tracks or the yellow of morning dogs.

Wet snow, the kind that made deadly ammunition,
would make a cup, but too solid to blend with syrup.

And too soft a snowfall, the cup would not hold, syrup
leaking through into mittens, around fingers, down

the fronts of snowsuits in crusting dribbles.
A nightfall of snow and moonflow was a covenant

between generations and I wondered
how the SPAM sender knew about it—some parallel

force that crossed the lines of technology
to bring us together: sender, receiver, grandmother.

Word Gathering

                        For Ellery who loves verbs

She comes, an old woman
with the eyes of a kestrel

and her pin feathers are dappled
when she spreads her wings.

She has been out gathering words,
her pleasure and the spine of her life.

They hold her bones together with a minimum
of rattles. What else could she ask for?

In the rain, words have been easy
to find, settled like leaves along the path,

and besides, the more seasoned nouns
know the old woman will be along.

Today she is looking for verbs, strong
with youth and blunt as hammers.

She'll gather them in armloads,
and carry them off in her cloak.

The woods are full of adjectives. She loves
their sounds, their bright lifting colors,

spends long hours admiring
their rolling descriptions, but the old woman

serves the poets, who have less use
for adjectives, seductive as they are.

When the poets come,
they jostle each other looking for words

both exact and new,
scoop huge piles and escape with them trailing.

Unchosen words rustle
around the old woman, nudging

her shoes, her hair, as she assures them
other poets will come.

CB Follett has won a few, published a few, read a few out loud, but mostly prefers to play with words and make meaning and music out of them. Her most recent book is Hold and Release published by Time Being Books.

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