Three Poems from S.E. Ingraham

On a Paris Night

Pacing, wearing down, I keep pacing in the alley,
Below the walls of stately, glowing Sacre Couer
Where the dark is seething and the intractable bats
Announce tonight's majesty: unfurling 'neath the bridges
On the Seine, ready to be pliant when the hour is struck
The flocks will rise as one to accommodate the master
They will turn the sky to pewter as they pilot him to me

By then if I've not squandered my remaining breath, he'll find me
In the lane beside the church with my heart just barely beating
He'll see it from the skies, a willing pulse, laid bare within my neck
And with the bats paying homage, slung from every surface
Watching us - a sea of green-black eyes - at last he'll grant me
Blessed sanction; the warmth of everlasting that only he can bestow ...



hemingway’s ghost

picture him here
perhaps growling
bleeding his work
over sacred porcelain
a sad prisoner
whose most haunted self
lingers like smoke
and darkness, seeping decay
which always surrounds
and embraces
the brilliant
old killer
remembers
after an eternity
he is broken, naked
ferocious with rot and
desires only to know
he will dazzle freely
drink clouded blue poison
then die



nigh time

the clock in the piazza is fixed
at the same hour it was when
last I saw it
as I pulled away
from the train station
bound for Roma ...
almost one year ago

puzzled, I spend long moments
many - watching time,
waiting futilely for a change,
a sign
and in my mind I hear
a voice -
Ferlinghetti's insolent
chattering gets louder

his has been in the background
of all the voices for months
maybe longer
he orders up insurgency
without which he
warns, the end of things
is nigh -

he points to the clock
stopped long ago;
one more example
of certainty
in an uncertain world
you wanted to bear witness?
he is mocking me, I know...
bear this

S.E.Ingraham lives and writes in Edmonton,Alberta,Canada - a city not-so-jokingly referred to as being on the lip of the Arctic Circle.  She shares space with the love of her life, a retired survey engineer, as well as a supremely loyal wolf/border collie. For the past two summer, she's been lucky enough to spend time with a group of crypt-kickers (aka:archaeological students)in a tiny town in southern Italy, in the shadow of a dormant volcano. She believes this is greatly influencing everything she writes. Recent publications have included Red Fez, Pyrokinection, and Poetic Bloomings:The First Year.  More of her work may be viewed here: The Poet Treehouse http://thepoet-tree-house.blogspot.ca/ and here, The Way Eye See It http://aleapingelephant.blogspot.ca/