Two Poems by Rebecca Gayle Howell
How Will I Know You
The morning before
the melt
a wren lands
on the porch
post closest
to the window
I look at You
through, the one
just under
the iron bell
oxidizing
its resentment
of winter
In two days
spring will be
here like a party
guest too
prompt to be
wanted but
we do want
her, we
cannot help
but want her
in her polkadots
and fever It is
the day before
all this goes
away I say
to myself
and the wren
says What do you
know It is all
already gone
Then
he goes
How Will I Know You
The frog song
trembles
up to the worm
blood moon Night
comes first
Then, the birds
*
Rebecca Gayle Howell is a poet, librettist, and literary translator. Among her awards are the United States Artists Fellowship, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Her next book is Erase Genesis, forthcoming this April from Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press.
[The morning before] reminded me on several levels of the text and background image of—ceramic?—bells at https://www.torhouse.org/prize/
It is curious that flower-soft verse
Is sometimes harder than granite,
tougher than a steel cable, more alive than life.
– Robinson Jeffers
Would you believe? Scant days after I replied, the URL changed (to ), and the image also changed. Imagine a weathered rustic wooden wall or fence structure with three bells (perhaps metallic—if non-ferrous—after all) hanging from nails by their cross-shaped ‘tangs’ or canons. They have decorative marks (reminiscent of decorative grooves in ceramic) chiseled onto their ‘flares’ or waists.