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Taylor Graham Poem
It was “Death” you drew.
You rolled that slip of paper
between your fingers
thin as onionskin,
and dropped it in your pocket.
Pastel lady,
did you wish to spare
us? You fluttered fingers
over the basket, and drew out
“Patio Party,”
a subject we must address
before we meet again.
How many great poems
have been penned on Death?
How many on a
Patio Party?
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2005
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Taylor Graham Poem
It was perfect for any occasion, with
the right accessories, like the traveling
pieces Mozart carried court to court.
No matter what style or instrument
the reigning virtuoso favored, violin
or piano left-hand, the master would have
just the thing to sparkle an entertainment.
Just so. One small stone would sparkle
at her throat, or her left hand, to favor
the violet of her eyes. A virtuoso
she was, a Mozart in the instrument
of style. Perfectly right, one dress
would carry her, court to court, as she
traveled through life on her accessories.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2005
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Taylor Graham Poem
Your love song lapsed into ancient French that April day.
I only understood the words of spring and heartsore
lapsed. Only love and heartsore, I understood your ancient
words of the spring-day song into that French April.
You fabricate my pauses into repetition, silence speaks
of ages strung to rhyme in love’s difficult service
you strung into pauses in service to ages. Fabricate of
love’s repetition, rhyme speaks my difficult silence.
We practice tedium of vows till language breaks apart.
As if art should aim at science, rigorous, quantitative,
rigorous language breaks tedium. Science vows a part of
quantitative practice till we should aim “as if” at art.
Till we lapsed into language. As your ancient ages only
fabricate quantitative French strung to that difficult
practice, science speaks of tedium and understood rhyme.
The spring in service of love’s rigorous vows. April
pauses, heartsore. You and I, apart. If love should aim
my words at day, repetition breaks into silence of song.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2006
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Taylor Graham Poem
PICK OF THE LITTER
The other pups sold for eight hundred,
a thousand. She was bought, returned.
Too bright, too hard. A diamond.
We got her for a prayer,
and now we’re paying.
Oh those trickster-
sparkling eyes.
She’s price-
less.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2012
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Taylor Graham Poem
Beside the last pew,
a chipped white collection plate.
A ghostly blessing
if you toss a modern coin
through time and the barred front door.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2005
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Taylor Graham Poem
Under a fading Celtic moon, half
a coin left over from last night, my sheep
are feasting on pasture lush and wild
with turkeys’ wings. A titmouse chick-a-dees
from an oak that’s spring-fresh green.
On hands and knees, I harvest Indian lettuce
for a salad. Do sheep wonder at my human
foraging? I’ll come back home
wearing colors of the field, muddy knees
grass-stained; I’m hungry to savor
my tiny isle of green.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2012
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Taylor Graham Poem
Beethoven wrote his version
in sonata-form. But tonight
the Flower Moon throws white petals
all over the hillside, making
silent music, a silver
chord. Can I, in my reflected
moon-life, hear it full
and whole?
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2006
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Taylor Graham Poem
(Charles II after the battle of Worcester, 1651)
They spur their horses from the bloody field,
the battle lost – a story old as time –
the King in flight, his kingdom’s fate is sealed
in common soil. And still the church-bells chime.
They spur their horses from the bloody field,
with Roundheads hunting King for every crime
of office and religion. Must he yield
his head now, like his father, in his prime?
His followers will see he’s well concealed.
The battle lost (a story old as time),
the head of state about to be Bastilled –
but no. Just puzzle out this pantomime:
the King in flight, his kingdom’s fate not sealed.
They make him peasant, royal face begrime
and so obscured, you see the crown revealed
in common soil. As all the church-bells chime,
they spur their horses from the bloody field,
the battle lost – a story old as time –
the King in flight, his kingdom’s fate now sealed
in common soil. And still the church-bells chime.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2008
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Taylor Graham Poem
From downstairs comes an overload
of lies and suppositions
out of Washington. I shut the door
and open up a book of poems
that chip and twitter like hard-
luck sparrows. And underneath
that harmonic line, I tune
in Rodrigo, who plaints guitar
to sing of places no gentler
by the blood that bears us, lung
to brain and hungers. And yet,
more beautiful than this evening’s
news, an elegy of strings.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2006
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Taylor Graham Poem
A father and his daughter
playing badminton
in a weedy backyard without a net.
How many times
can the battering back-and-
forth connect to send a plastic
shuttlecock flying? Stroke,
that’s 70, return again
on a high easy arc, 71, while
Mom fixes dinner (meatloaf
again, count the grocery
pennies, 79 a pound, and
a husband with nothing better
to do after work than hit plastic
birdies).
But they’re actual
flying birds, 81, these
soaring plastic wings
rallied by a father
and his daughter, 82, stroke
83, never
let it touch the ground
or you have to start
all over again
counting. Yesterday
they sailed to 99 before
dinner which is always
waiting.
Copyright © Taylor Graham | Year Posted 2006
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