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At The Metropolitan Museum
one good reason for the French Revolution
Once at the Met, we walked the halls, and she
Looked past locked doors, each shaded mystery;
Then gazed in silence at a gilded bed—
Gasped in delight. French fripperies! she said.
Not any couch where Mama might have strayed,
Nor velvet ropes where some French Queen had played.
No camera captured, ounce by graphic ounce,
The grandeur of the Royal Regent’s bounce
Or now recorded Mama’s wistful sighs.
She knew her weight, and so she could surmise
The Queen and she could both fit in that place—
She bounced! A blissful smile lit up her face.
To think she’d bounced upon a French Queen’s bed!
New York is not so bad … that’s what she said.
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Wolf Winter
Through disarray, decay, it’s hard to see
As freezing sleet drops down in rolling beads.
Scant remnants wilt, and frost’s dark frozen glaze
Crumbles each fragile leaf, cements in air.
The stars in full array, wolves warily
Skitter on black ice, skirt the broken reeds
To stalk their prey, to disembowel, and raise
Their yawps to steaming meat. Then they rest where
They curl with sated guts beneath a tree.
Wolf winter, resolute in how it feeds
On all that’s weak and warm, begins to craze,
Freezes these wolves with its cold baleful stare.
So it is now and so will ever be—
The wolves lose to a greater cruelty.
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Wintering
Each simple song or lengthy lyric poem
Will not warm her up. She seems quite dead
To all she thought might heat her empty bed:
The red quilt, bought to cheer the lonely heart,
Upon the bed lies flat and stiff, apart,
As bitter winds fill every empty crack
To emphasize the freeze, and aching lack
Of warmth. Red as what spreads upon her bed,
The heart it covers fills with heavy lead
And lies there in lethargic, numbing cold—
A heart that once beat fast, bright, brash, and bold.
The barren season has at last set in—
And hibernates within her porcelain skin.
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Sally Cook is both a poet and a painter of magical realism. Her poems have also appeared in Blue Unicorn, First Things, Chronicles, The Formalist Portal, Light Quarterly, National Review, Pennsylvania Review, TRINACRIA, and other electronic and print journals. A six-time nominee for a Pushcart award, in 2007 Cook was featured poet in The Raintown Review. She has received several awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, and her Best American Poetry Challenge-winning poem “As the Underworld Turns” was published in Pool.
All of these are beautifully done — the first a pleasant memory, and the other two disquieting.
Let me point out that “Wintering” is an example of the 13-line sonnet form used frequently by the poet Marcy Jarvis, where the last line of the poem contains internal rhyme (“within” and “skin”).
I had no idea one could bounce on a bed of a French Queen at the Met Museum. “Wolf Winter” has an unusual rhyme scheme that seems to fit the somber scene. In “Wintering,” I can feel the penetrating cold numbing the once vibrant body. All three give one pause to ponder.
Sally, I quite agree that “New York is not so bad” with all the museums to visit. One does encounter all kinds of reactions, and your poem presents some that are typical and amusing. I could complain that entrance costs more now than in my student days. But I am glad not yet to resemble your “Wintering” woman. You make much of her redness, but she seems in a fair way to become a piece of museum quality blue-and-white porcelain.
Of these three pieces, “Wolf Winter” is my favorite. I contrast your fiercely chilly picture with the lazy coyotes across the street from me, who come down the mountain through the culverts to a vacant lot well supplied with rabbits and squirrels. They will not put up with freezing temperatures where they belong, and do not go back as soon as convenient. As “urban wildlife” they avoid winter’s “cold baleful stare.” You give us sympathy for your poor wolves and their wretched existence–being winter’s prey even as they disembowel whatever prey they find. A harsh habitat, and so it will ever be.
Best wishes for warmth indoors and eleven more merry days of Christmas!
Dearest Sally, you always thrill me with the pictures you paint with words. These three gems have made my Boxing Day extra special.
I love the wry, smile-inducing humor of “At The Metropolitan Museum” and can picture the scene. I have gazed upon many a regal bed on my trips to castles, where my imagination has bounced beyond the castle turrets. You capture such a moment beautifully!
“Wolf Winter” and “Wintering” are magnificent in their vivid portrayal of the harsh elements of a savage season for many. I particularly like your use of red and its stark contrast with the porcelain in the closing couplet of “Wintering” – Sally, you never cease to amaze me. Thank you, my friend!
Oh, Susan, such praise from a well-respected friend to a friend is gratefully accepted. Of the many accolades you sent my way (all of which are so deeply appreciated) I think first and foremost, of the several instances you mentioned, is the way in which I use color to show a thing in words. It’s obvious, really, to have color jumping back and forth from painting to poetry; concluded – most poets don’t use sinethysia, etc.kicking in from time to time, but I often wonder why more poets don’t discuss this aspect of my work; just recently decided its because no one can spell it. I know I can’t.
Partridge in a Pear tree to you, Mike, George and all others -o
Roy, one answer as to the possibility of bouncing on French beds might be — You can’t, Unless you are my mother.
NIT.
Laughing out loud! Understood.
Dearf Margaret –
–
That was my Mama, bouncing on Queen Marie’s bed. And she judged New York by the fun she had there. At home, fun was to be had feeding the deer in a blizzard, and looking deep into the eyes of some errant doe to whom she had never been formally introduced.
Casually introduced to life by the children in her predominantly Indian school, she ran wild as a tomboy, learning Indian dances, wearing buckskin dresses and new handmade moccasins each year,
Oddly though, when it came to genealogy, she trumped all the lines of my father’s family, her people were the ones with the 32nd gen. legitimate line back to Edward I and Margaret of France. You scared up a few extra lines for me if you remember.
As for my father, he did a lot of huffing and puffing and then retired gracefully from the genealogical scene.
Hope you had a fine Christmas
Sally,,,,,,
Sally, what an amazing genealogy! You have royal blood going back to the Plantagenet kings, you are in the D.A.R., and you had ancestors who took part in the 1588 Armada attempt (on both sides of the battle!) What a heritage — and on top of all that you are a fine painter and poet.
I enjoyed all three but Wolf Winter really stood out for me. I never before felt any sympathy for wolves but, as you point out, even apex predators have a greater cruelty to deal with.
Even the wolves. Thank you for your wise comment and my wishes for a very good New Year. As for the wolves, — who knows?
Joe, I loved doing genealogy – some others I can count are George Soule who was on the Mayflower and signed the Compact. This entitles me to march in costume down the beach from Plymouth Rock to some predetermined place (not sure where). Also Frances Latham, but that’s pretty much a side issue. Fran, she bore 11 children to three husbands, and was the daughter of Lewis Latham, Falconer to Charles I, known as the Mother of Governors because so many early governors were descended from her.
Can also count descent from the Lord of Limerick, and, because of Margaret of France, connect up with the well known French Poet whose name escapes me at the moment but who Margaret Coats unearthed for me, so to speak. People are so generous with their knowledge, which includes you ! !
And let us not forget my four signers of the Magna
a Carta?! Did I mention I am also descended from The Lord of Limerick?
If I sound as if I’m bragging, well, I am! It was all done for my mother, who never got to know about most of it even though she may have fantasized about some, while feeding the chickens.
Sally, I read and enjoyed them all. “At the Metropolitan Museum” reminds me a bit of the joyful nostalgic New York poems of Phyllis McGinley. Also of a time when my friend, my sister, and I took a running leap into a museum bed at Plimoth Plantation, getting scolded by a stranger – but oh well, it was unforgettably fun. There’s even a picture of the event somewhere, snapped by my friend’s mother, who took our side. Hope your New Year is a happy one, with unforgettable fun included.
Dear Monika
Don’t you think some people are fated to experience more strange moments than others? I do. Further, I believe that they turn our thoughts into odd places. I also believe we have used them well.
I trust your holiday is proceeding with all due frivolity !