Jean Raghnild Roisum

More sweet than as these yellow petals soft

Could grace your cheek your hand did touch my face

That day we lay outstretched upon the sand 

And heard the waves lap love’s short time away.

Now like this flower from its root removed

We languish each in lonely, distant place,

Our summers brief, our winters long demand

We hurry time whose rush then cannot stay.

Yet know by this you are more carefully loved,

That hungered for as food is your embrace,

That love is surer which must trials withstand,

Though for their quickest end I earnest pray.

For my love’s voice is lost and all joys pained,

Nor I rejoice but in your sight regained.

c. 1985

So young your eyes were yet to me so fair

As half a child’s and half a woman’s glance,

Where wisdom did joy’s comeliness enhance

And play brought wit to wisdom’s somber stare.

But late those lights are pits of deep despair.

Their lids in sleep are shrouds on much-tried hope.

In vain you look away so that their scope

You might the bones of young love’s body spare.

Yet if we now as climbing greens entwine,

Though neither strong enough can all walls scale,

On the other’s grasp if our own should fail.

So cling to me, who gave your life for mine,

Whose tender care I wearied into death.

Awake with me and share my regained breath.

c. 1985

Your love I seek as saints have sought God’s grace:

With single wish and heart did they transcend 

All purposes profane, each time and place,

And found at start the joy that is love’s end.

So I in loving you have hopes each touch 

At once all blossoms yet to be will taste,

For I in trust would pledge to you as much,

That you may be by all my days embraced.

So please confirm my love with your sweet smile

And render all, surrendering the source.

Confirm my joy and take me from my trial

Assured my only good’s my only course.

Except that hope against the dark of night

You are my center-sought and only light.

c 1985

Come mark with me the day we met, the years’

Increase, that happy fruit, four joyful hearts 

Asleep, cradled in our love’s watchful care.

Though nights be dark and days wait shadow crossed

We’ll shield them a while from the world’s worst fears.

As if still capsuled in our inmost parts

Their hurts, their sorrows, burdens first we’ll bear.

We plant and weed to save that strength which lost

Never regrows on soil where children’s tears 

Unstopped have washed away the fragile starts

Of trust and confidence, where hateful air

Or drought blows love-parched fields to angry dust.

As our love looks to theirs, soon strong and free,

So mine, ringed by yours, may ever yielding be.

c 1985

                In what desert of self-solace do you dwell

Doubly fatigued by all my tiresome need?

To what spare fortress does your heart recede

Encumbered by each compliment I tell?

“Your breath so sweet,” fans boredom’s sighs.

To dare, “I would my hand upon your heart,”

Arcs your bones and makes our bodies part.

Each plan to capture snares its own demise.

But from your lonely, lofty tower spy

This madman’s ventures on your casual shell,  

And pray your cool bastion won’t withstand.

For at love’s pained breaking point I’ll try

                Every force, wit, artifice, and skill

                To make you laugh, cry, love, and grant your hand.

c. 1985

In photographs I found your bandaged knee,

Impish grin, tomboy stance. Pages later,

                Childhood passed, you stood a teenaged dater

At the dance in youth’s full-blossomed beauty.

Your face I’ve held in raptured ecstasy

And soothed its strain in labor’s deep intent.

Your smile in comfort, laughter, singing spent,

Makes new old joys recalled in memory.

Forgive me then if I in fancy paint

Your visage without blemish, line, or spot,

Or dream you never dance with step awry.

Not that you live always a flawless saint,

But good alone is etched, all else forgot,

Imagining with love’s transforming eye.

c  1985

                We kissed and my hand softly stroked your hair.

                  We read each other rightly and undressed.

Your mirrored milky limbs my gaze caressed

When playfully you scolded, “Please don’t stare.”

                 Streams will sooner upland flow than my eyes

                Look away. As spring’s petals ache to feast

                On light of day on you they come to rest.

All other scenes dull views they will despise.

So let us with this argument be done:

The moon would never fault its loyal tide;

Nor would the North its faithful pointers chide.

Forgive the flower, blame the beaming sun.

Assured then, I had made my point, by chance

When I looked up, I caught your secret glance.

c  1985

No woman ever lived whom poets praised

But flickered on the pathways of their brains

Unreal as lovelies pictured on the page

Who neither breathe nor dance yet set to flame

Men’s raw desire. So words, if aptly phrased,

Can conjure sensate echoes, life’s remains,

To form a player placed upon a stage

Who acting leads the will, refines its aim.

Then neither scorn my work nor spurn my love

Thinking you are by one unfair compared

And by the other falsely known. That force

Is not their own by which these specters move

My heart to care. Their beauty, goodness shared 

In earthly flesh is you, their font, their source.

c 1985

At night in Misquamicut’s still-warm sand

You stick-scratched our children’s names one by one

Knowing by the hour they would all be gone,

Erased by the Atlantic’s second hand.

Next morning, having the time of our life,

In a sunlit century bedroom we

Played eager whaling captain home from sea

At long last to his faithful waiting wife.

However brief, such evanescent signs

Must to some high eternal court convey

Our true devotion, powerfully sway

Their judgment. For relying on these lines,

They would conclude with wistful envied sigh

That no two ever loved but you and I.

c 1986

Of course they think our bond fell ready-forged

Complete from Tennessee’s clear heaven’s blue 

That crisp, late October afternoon when

For all the world to witness we declared

To treasure first each other’s self and dared

All time to hobble our delight. From then

To now we’ve gaily danced, our vows kept true,

Prepared our hearts for music yet unscored.

How easily we paid the price and shed

Those lesser selves we early sought, discerned

How Love who loved us first had improvised

Far grander forms than any we’d devised,

Clad us like lilies, finer than we’d earned.

So courting daily newly are we wed.

c 1986  

If all I ever wanted was your smile

Your easy laughter told I had the power 

To enchant you ever after. I could

Have left within the hour but stayed the while.

Or if to sense your body’s inward fire

Was all my need, plucking your sweet flower,

I should have thought to close the door for good

But lingered, tempted to explore desire.

Since I aspire to be your only love,

Pledging you my heart all days to spend our

Lives together, let this be understood:

Profits accrue both ways. All tests would prove

A fair exchange our bargaining to be:

Your love, my life, for rapture, ecstasy. 

c 1985

Once when I was young and slim and golden

                  Of an Indiana summer your head                                            

                  Upon my shoulder gently lay. Moonlight

Softly filtered through late autumn’s yellowed

Leaves, made pearls of teardrops on your scarf. Then

Your words came into me, scholar long-dead,

Like spring’s mountain freshets bubbling crystal-white,

Enlivened all from winter’s icy hold.

So have we melted, time and time again,

With words, thoughts, and flesh we every hunger fed;

Defeated seasons in this angels’ flight,

Tapped eternal power and with its fire glowed.

For this then did we in history pair:

To grow by love and then to glory share.

c  1985.

When I with you in love’s sweet fire have lain

So like sailors charting an unknown sea

By familiar stars come at last to rest

In sunset’s glory on a newfound shore,

Or astronauts on thunder-studded flame

Rising, hurtling, curving through the starry

Trackless void, trust their final, fiery test

To counting at the atom’s ticking core,

Or saints for whom life’s every joy and pain

In death conjoin to lasting ecstasy

Perceive those paths and to those guides hold fast

Who mark the way to love’s unending store;

So then we know why hunger’s drive’s so deep

And all such pleasures meant for us to reap.

c 1986

This water like a lover’s kiss upon

Your lips, your breasts, hips, thighs, and feet as you

Slip silently by, buoys your silken frame

Yields to your stroke and waits your next embrace.

These textbooks, like a lover’s letters con-

Centrate your thoughts, feed your gaze, and bear to

Your heart those medical routines whose aim

Is to transform your hands for caring grace.

Again you grow in beauty and in truth

And gladly I will every help provide

Although the efforts truly yours alone.

Yet I recall how as a student youth

You claimed my heart and joined me as my bride

And since have shared all joys you’ve ever known.

c 1986

Do not rely alone upon my loy-

Al heart for ever-faithful love, pretend-

Ing these eyes blind to others’ glory, locked 

But to your beauty’s key, or these ears deaf

To any other’s story, to your voice

Open only, or this flesh numb except-

Ing to your body’s quickened pulse. Did not

You storm this fortress first through the eye, then 

Gain the ear with pleasant argument?

The heart succumbed and touch then sealed the vow.

Yet all these gates remain agape and must.

So rush again as to be first in fervent

Struggle at every portal every now

Until this stronghold fail and fall to dust.

c 1986

Although for ears this tongue may never frame

A portrait yielding half the eyes’ delight

On seeing you, yet I will try despite

My fears for words to find your beauty’s name.

If I so challenge them they might suggest

The eager succor of your love’s embrace

And so defy this line’s too meager space

And bear the soft warmth of your fragrant breast.

But almost all words fail, put to the test 

Of your enduring love, except God’s grace,

From which it springs, survives and grows apace,

Forgiving all my flawed, mere human best.

So in these lines all words are compromise

But of your love they’re little less than lies.

c 1986

And if there is a woman it is she

Whose liquid voice revives my noise-worn ears

Whose beauty like a magnet snags my gaze

Whose unmistaking touch can trace my heart.

For her courageous loving sets me free

From shadows cast by all my childhood fears;

Her clearer sight, my aid in choice’s haze,

She loosed the bonds that tied my timid art.

Yet as I honor her, she honors me

In love’s exchange so dancing through the years.

To raise each other’s hopes, exceed the praise,

Sustain all trial, and choose the better part.

For love’s reflection gains no greater prize

Than find its mirror in its lover’s eyes.

c 1986

If ever fame should fall to me for praise 

Of you, how oddly then, would erring chance

Decide to laud the dancer for the dance

As if none other could his steps retrace.

For Leibnitz sought, and Newton likewise found,

Though neither knew the other on the path

To calculus, that incremental math

Which placed all science on a firmer ground.

And as it is in science, so it is in art

That similar minds might well alike conceive

If objects comparable their sense behold.

So he must write, he who takes my part 

Within your arms, if I earth’s arms receive,

And all your gracious loving be retold.

c 1986

When weary with this world’s unending woe

Or sundered by my sadly proven fault

My spirit flagging, laggard, lame, and halt

Lay victim to the day’s destructive flow,

Torn to answer here before I answer there

Assailed by friend and foe from every side

Whose eager taunts erode my crumbling pride

And send me stumbling headlong to despair,

Then by the sight of some unmixed good—birds’

Flight, a child’s smile—I grasp the root above,

Disown my curse, and free again grow bold;

For he who made my lips to speak these words,

Who filled my heart with words to tell my love

Leads me to you to treasure, trust, and hold.

c 1988

Lady, this love for life on flesh must feed

                Though sight or sound or touch of you entice

Only to fail the need; that food suffice 

Alone wherein your heart you freely cede.

As babes who long in darkness warmly wombed

Once brusquely born to brightness, chilling air

Find first fond calm in mothers’ clasping care

So turn we home until we are entombed.

Then let us from this common union take

That bread and wine for which our bodies burn

In pure devotion heaven’s blessings earn

And on earth each other’s heaven make.

In love’s surrender still are we increased

Though feeding all the other yet we feast.

c 1989

         Perhaps in mornings’ quiet I might find

In nearby wood the sun’s first tangent beam

Break green translucent fire against the pale

Blue newborn sky.  Or later watch those same

Transecting planes concede their verdant glow

To blue-black night. Thus days begin and end

As certainly as noon is known by shad-

Ows’ brevity. The eye’s blink, the camera’s

Click can no more catch the instant than one

Can stanch a river with a stick. So when

Last you said you loved me, and slipped from life

As water through my grasp, your body slack,

Your eyes that stared away, is every day

Relentlessly more distant, lost to me.

c  2001

How often in the moonlit fog we walked,

Held hands, our only warmth, yet knew just when

In the shadow of a bough, to turn our-

Selves together, our arms enwrap, and kiss.

How often in the beach’s waves we walked,

Held hands, each other’s anchor as we played,

Your tanless skin now safe in sunset’s shade,

As water washed our feet, we’d softly kiss.

How often in the falling snow we walked,

Held hands, our gentle link in darkening hours,

Each other guided up and through the wood,

‘Til on the crest we stood, and breathless kissed.

Now from that tender clasp so cruelly torn

By death, my kiss lay on my lips stillborn.

c 2002

No, none can say, I “love” you, with the word

As if the sound itself its sense conveyed.

Consider hymns we hold so fraught with praise

Which in a foreign ear no laud is heard.

Could grapefruit cut with care for thirty years

Contain a part? Or boots pulled gently on

Or off? Fetching drinks and snacks must surely

Count, as would walking babies in the night

Or waking quietly to let you sleep,

And sharing trials and tears. And racing back

To kiss you one more time—as if to say

That trains and planes and all the world can wait.

Unless I placed you first in all designed

My “love” was wasted breath and undefined. 

.                c 2002 

                This drear first Easter since your death finds me

Attired in gloom of grief, awash in tears.

Even all of Sunday’s alleluias 

Failed to lift my leaden soul. Their echoes

Swelling still within recall that first spring

When you in yellow splendor stood beside

Me in the pew, your voice as angel-bright

And clear as ever near God’s throne would sing.

                 Then each year since you left my side and joined

The robed triumphant throng to celebrate

With voice and organ’s volume strained the Love

That made the world and makes the world again.

So apropos this Easter’s bleak cold rain,

To hold to hope in grief, to love in pain. 

c  2002 

Old, dear, Reverend Thomas, who did not

Know he, too, soon would die, came to pray with

Us in the hours of your death, when you were

Too weak even for tenderness.  Softly

We spoke, unsure he’d remember, of heart-

Breaking children, progress to date, how but

For the pain there was no treatment. Defer-

Ring, he left a slim sacred volume that

Addressed every need. We couldn’t read it

And found tears are prayers, wordless and wet

Salt-life surrendered from the furthest cells

Welling inward to swell the stream—clumsy

Convulsion, fleshquake of sorrow—thought-

Lessly sobbing our unspeakable wish.

c 2005