Three poems by Denise C. Banker

Oak Glen

Each day my dog Rosebud

and I hike to this same spot

at Oak Glen where prairie

crisp in late January calms

despite a chill wind

We muse among bur oaks'

rutted, furrowed trunks

and gnarled limbs

Rosebud, let us always return

We wait for wind's timbre

voice to fix us in its hum

to this horizon of grass

To set loose our calamities

To scatter memory's mulch

in lichen, leaves and acorn husks

Let these blow away from us

We walk off a friend's conceit

We lay a stretch of regret

beneath blue berried juniper

We soak a load of animus,

its ugly vapor hissing,

in the beaver's creek

Everywhere the hush alive

invites us to let go

Rosebud, let us let go

Preservation

The future belongs to anyone else.

I'm staying in the past

where your blue eyes hold me

in their smile, where nights are star-

filled and fragrant, where autumn

has arranged dried leaves in unmown grass.

In the future you will have faded,

so I cling to our past. The map

of your palm unfolded

and held out to me.

I finger our route along

the work-worn surface.

I give the future away,

the box wrapped in silver

and gold, like Christmas,

and write myself into a snowglobe:

the net of snow, the prairie, a dog,

two boys, and their parents walking.

Sculpture

The Platte river pulls a rim of fog

to its lip, and trees in fresh nakedness

toss. There was hard freeze last night.

I wind the clocks,

your old job,

so I take pride

in having learned

to turn the key

eight turns to the left

Wednesday and

Saturday nights.

A silence is here

like in the study of art.

It chisels your absence

into shape:

this fog-scarved river

and these bare trees

shift of stone unnoticed,

sap deep in heartwood,

fog diaphanous

shrouding the river.

11 (67)

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
to comprehend a nectar
Requires a sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Hosts
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

as he defeated - dying -
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson's Poems
Ed., Thomas H. Johnson
Little, Brown & Co., 1961

In this poem the speaker is lamenting her/his own defeat or, out of some deeper loss suffered that restricts her/his ability to "win" graciously, is mocking those defeated . So at once the poem is the defeated's bitter lament, and the bully's vicious, bitter crowing. We can't know Dickinson's intention exactly, but her point is crystalline: the loser clearly knows the anguish of defeat, and at the same time, clearly knows the definition of success. We all lose at some time in our lives: maybe it's a lover, a beloved spouse, a child, a brother or a sister to death, or to worse; maybe it's our innocence, our faith in government, our resilience, our sense of fair-play.
Sometimes we are the "purple Hosts:" we do demonstrate how much we love someone or want something by trying, with all of our might, to comprehend that person, achieve that something-- "the nectar," as Dickinson says. But to no avail. And sometimes, (go ahead, "write it" as Elizabeth Bishop says), we, for whatever reason, want to add insult to injury: we know the defeated is hurt, but we're too hurt by losing whatever it is we lost to be able to care. How agonized and clear those strains of triumph burst on the forbidden ear.

Here's another poem by Emily Dickinson:

310 (761)

From Blank to Blank-
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet-
To stop-or perish-or advance-
Alike indifferent-

If end I gained
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed-
I shut my eyes-and groped as well
'Twas lighter-to be Blind-

Same source as poem above

The phrase "indefinite disclosed" coming right after acknowledging "gain" always "ends", is masterfully despondent. And the tag "as well" tells us the speaker is so "Mechanic" in this "Threadless Way" that she/he may as well "grope" around in willful blindness too. The pun on the word "lighter" is sardonic. To say it's "lighter -to be Blind" is to say it's less of a burden to choose to "not see" what you're doing, what's being done, or, simply, what is. Again, we can't be certain of Dickinson's intention. We do know, however, that this is an intense grief, and that neither of these poems is a recollection in tranquility. Poems that are simultaneously personal, private correspondence and open correspondence with the world are what the writer wants to achieve. Dickinson has achieved this in both poems.

Fresh snow on the mountains this morning, chiffon clouds