Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CACTUS SEED, by LOLA RIDGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CACTUS SEED, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Radiant notes
Last Line: Pricking multiple leaves at his wondrous story.
Alternate Author Name(s): Lawson, David, Mrs.
Subject(s): Cactus


I

Radiant notes
Piercing my narrow-chested room,
Beating down through my ceiling --
Smeared with unshapen
Belly-prints of dreams
Drifted out of old smokes --
Trillions of icily
Peltering notes
Out of just one canary;
All grown to song,
As a plant to its stalk,
From too long craning at a sky-light
And a square of second-hand blue.

Silvery-strident throat
So assiduously serenading me,
My brain flinches under
The glittering hail of your notes.
Were you not safe behind -- rats know what thickness of -- plastered wall,
I might fathom
Your golden delirium
With throttle of finger and thumb,
Shutting valve of bright song.

II

But if -- away off -- on a fork of grassed earth
Socketing an inlet of blue water . . .
If canaries -- do they sing out of cages? --
Flung such luminous notes,
They would sink in the spirit,
Lie germinal . . .
Housed in the soul as a seed in the earth,
To break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles on the mouth . . .
Or, glancing off buoyantly,
Radiate notes in one key
With the sparkle of rain-drops
On the petal of a cactus flower
Focusing the just-out sun.

Cactus . . . why cactus?
God . . . God!
Somewhere . . . away off . . .
Cactus flowers, star-yellow,
Ray out of spiked green;
And empties of sky
Roll you over and over
Like a mother her baby in long grass.
And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees,
Pricking multiple leaves at his wondrous story.





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