"cypress" by Cordelia Hanemann

homage to D.H. Lawrence

I return too often

to the bayou land of my marriage

there: lone cypress

folded in like a dark thought

for which the language has been lost

cold cypress

barely decipherable

naked not dead in winter

full of dread

dark cypress

words hollow as seed pods

in winter have shed their sound

going with quietness

their business forgotten

all that is left is shadow

a futile fist raised against

a graying sky

cypress

dusky slim

marrow thought of past time

more seen darkly old thought:

perishable

while you cypress

remain

brooding diffident a skeleton

to hang memory on

revenant of the vanished echoes

of the darkly lost

too much has been buried

in the dusk at the back

of cypresses

Cordelia Hanemann is currently a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. A retired professor of English at Campbell University, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Southwestern Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine's new anthology, Friends and Friendship and forthcoming, Adversity, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poems have won awards and been nominated for Pushcarts. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.