Two New Poems

Now that i am done with graduate application essays and portfolios, i can finally find time to play with words again (yes, yes, i see the irony there). Here, then, are drafts of two new poems... the first is about a necklace given to me by Mauro, my program coordinator and dear friend from Mexico. For the second one, you might want to look up "Delhi iron pillar" on wikipedia for context, especially if you aren't from this part of the world. Both are drafts, both need more work, but the exhilaration of finally writing poetry again is too great to allow me to leave these in a desk drawer for a few more weeks!

A Necklace of Seeds

I wear a necklace of seeds

from an earth that is still sacred.

Watermelon seeds and the tears

of saints that have traveled

exactly halfway across the world

to be with me.

I rub the necklace like a rosary,

then place it against my cheek.

Through the pricking of some seeds

and the smoothness of others,

that earth speaks to me. Be well,

it says, for I am here.

Here. Hear.

THE DELHI IRON PILLAR

Long ago, before the fences were built,

we hugged the iron pillar. Eight or nine,

we must have been, out on our first

school excursions, arms clearly too tiny

to go around. We stood there, backs

pressed against cold iron, hands reaching out,

groping for each other, across six tons

of sixteen hundred years old iron,

yet unrusted. Something good

was to happen if the hands met.