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from
THE UNEXPECTED
by
CAROL BERGE
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SONG FOR BEGINNING
yes you are permitted you are
allowed yes you are hallowed
are given grace are
valid
as you are as you stand as you
walk
yes you are forgiven you
are loved are embraced
yes
you are
called excellent as you stand and
as you simply sit
yes you start
thus a small step this step
a hesitant a wondering as frond
of fern in wind
then milkweed or
another step until
moss and then
yes you are running there is rain
the air of light the leaves
all the
faces the finally friends o
yes
yes
you are so beautiful as you
walk as you run fly not moving in
wind leaves
are hallowed the sun
and your face o listen
all the
yes finally
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WITH WATER
each of them says 'I have loved you
because you have never told me i am ugly'
soap sets blood: cool water removes it.
there they go, down the oldest streets
in each of the cities, wearing the tall hat
of self-abnegation, their worn fingernails
adorned with commemorative postage-stamps
bearing their youthful faces. last year's
rumors made cabbages sources of nutrition
and potatoes were valueless: this was
reversed ten years ago, and the housewives
cooked them in every phase. but when
the house became quiet, the night drowning
in denigration, 'i have loved you well,
mark this, mark what i have done, notice,'
with water, with kettles full of hot water,
to set the blood, and the next morning
there they go, toward the village fountain,
toward the white mistakes of soap to set it.
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TOMCAT DOING NOTHING
for Frank Murphy
It sits
it is being an animal
a male animal
alive on earth
it is alive.
It is alive
apparently motionless
the atoms within are moving
back toward earth
it is a cat sitting
apparently doing nothing.
The ribcage moves
the diaphragm moves slightly
the lungs
the digestive tract.
Eyes stare straight ahead
into infinity.
As he sits immobile
he is moving moving moving
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UNFINISHED POEM
i. to go out
to the world
this time dressed as a
japanese printmaker,
not the eyes or
epicanthus, but
yes,
perspective
as that of an island:
out,
out into a world,
to find it earth! and
more simple, complex
than it seemed:
reducible
to a few lines with
shadings, the wood
to its grain
rather than to the
external form.
what
part of earth are you!
and after that, to
go out,
perhaps dressed as a
haida shaman,
finding it
all ocean! and
strewn with cowry: lines
across sand.
once.
the land bridged.
ii. let it
be an earth color;
orange or hematite or
dark as vital loam
where rivers are,
or blue
of roots from
the parched mesas,
saved
distillate of rain
toward one hand.
but always
as this rug
woven
of wool from a real sheep,
alive, shorn with shears
and dyed
perhaps with berries
until brilliant, or
left so:
the soft natural.
but always
fashioned with
eyes, with hands,
as friends' faces, worn or
young: with the
nature of it
evident,
brought
out.
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OF ROOTS AND SOURCES
(for d. levertov)
as when the person's bones and thoughts
show like branches, through the skin,
through the years, overlaid in muted or
fern tracery. or the voice remembered
when the page is read. it is the sense
of the thing to come, when discovering
this face that is not new, after all:
the idea opposite you which agrees
with these definitions you have become.
under spruce, the needles fall and fall,
the new in patterns resembling letters,
the past forming their base or the way
through which the fine sheets climb.
it is those moving near you, to remind
of roots and sources, of your own leaf.
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THE SMALL TOWN
What each of us does
is so interesting.
Especially to each other.
Interesting to each other.
What we do
to and with each other.
This is the most
interesting place on
earth at the most
interesting possible time.
Here. Right now. We are
right, now; we are right
here. We are all right.
Yes, we are all here.
Here we are, and it is
all we are. All of it is so
interesting, to each other,
what a place to be placed
in, in history,
at this time on earth!
Doing what we do, the way
we do it, to and with
each other. And always
so interested in each other.
If you move here, you
will automatically be here
too, and you will be
part of what we do
a moving part of it all
and therefore interesting
while you are doing and
being done to.
Meantime, we are all here
in this place and it is
the best place to be
more now than ever.
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THE UNEXPECTED was published by Membrane
Press, Milwaukee. Copyright 1976 by Carol
Berge.
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Spunk Collective.