THE CHIMES OF PARTCH

They're tuned to a scale
You can't discover on a Steinway
Priam heard its voice
Before trumpets called at Troy
Leonidas listened to their magic
Before Xerxes marched to Thermopylae
Their echo rings
In Uganda and Zimbabwe
Where five tones utter volumes
No scroll or tome can capture.

In what tongue do they speak to me?
A claustrophobic dweller
In a California condo
Drowning in a sea of Heavy Metal
Canned laughter on Newhart and Cheers
Science is clay
With no breath of magic
We grow deaf with no echo of the past.

ELEGY

Memory's an importunate guest
Arriving uninvited
Laden with dubious baggage
A litter of odds and ends

It strews hybrid treasure
On a pale shroud
Its synchrony not unalloyed
With dissonance

We snatch small moments
Hoping for gifts not subject to scale or tithe
The brief smile
A clasped hand
That flash fire of difference
Forged in a common crucible

Not base metal
Perhaps the philosopher's stone
Its elixir transient
An echo thin as a thread
Maybe a panacea
For all too short a season
Our gold filament of immortality
A blossom in the dust.

AGING ON AN ISLAND OF THE YOUNG

The grey heron hunts at evening
Soaring like an arrow through the midnight air
A tawny owl pierces the blue black sky
With strength stored in the heart
Of those who know the night
The Arctic fox, the homely slug

Eels feast in an ebony sea
Unlocking riddles with the key of depth
Not speed
The lacewing and Roe fawn
The possum and the badger
Cohabit with a waning moon

Orb web spiders cradle in a shrinking belly
Silken threads to spin a world
The bush cricket chirps in tones unheard
In a land where collagen rules
The lynx sprints with greatest zest at dusk
The swan glides with full throated grace on the kiss of evening air

The common crayfish and caddis fly
The otter and the snail
Speak with Venus
Share secrets with Orion's belt
The starfish and the sea urchin
Embrace the setting sun

Dolphins dance their pas de deux
With joy in a fading light
The octopus spreads nocturnal tenacles
Wide enough to hold a world
The desert flower's evening root sinks deep and true
Growing old is a cosmic art.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey is retired. She lectured for 19 years in the English Department of Stanford University in California in the USA. In addition, during that time for almost a decade, she served as a resident fellow in an all-freshmen dormitory. Before that, she was an instructor at Tufts University in New England, where she received her doctorate in Elizabethan poetry, specifically that of Edmund Spenser. Recently, in her retirement she has been active in teaching at Emeritus College in the San Francisco Bay Area for about six years. She is the author of over 30 published poems and some 30 awards from contests and competitions.

Email: Suzanne Richardson Harvey

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