This week’s Poem Pick comes from Carol Edelstein who lives and writes in Northampton, Massachusetts. We are dear friends and were neighbors when I lived east. Carol provided the magic I needed in my own early writing days with her innovative workshops. Perugia Press published Carol’s book of poems, The Disappearing Letters, in 2005, in which this poem appears.
Love Song on Stilts
I want to make you
a poem entirely of wood.
Even the way into it
will be wood, a spiral staircase
painted the onyx of our river
on that first evening
we walked along it together,
hoping to glimpse the wild swans
who had shown themselves earlier.
Being in love gives us the pleasure
of close calls like these,
visitations that miss
by a little.
And I’ll carve the words of your poem from blocks,
including sheen, glissando, nearly, and nest,
set them on stilts to face the door
through which you
will arrive.
I’ll even fashion clogs
for you to make a racket in,
and then, when you
slip them off,
the polished, oiled quiet.
Carol Edelstein