I Didn't Come Here to Meet You

The prose-poems are starting to build up. I plan to do a limited edition booklet this spring. As with my last Owl's Head Press publication, this will be a small, handmade production of 30 copies.

It will be called I Didn't Come Here to Meet You. Copies can be ordered from me at this blog site or e-mail me at allan-cooper@excite.com Each copy will sell for $20.00.


THE FACE

We are the snow ticking through the branches,
the needles of hemlock fallen on earth. We are
the voice inside the cricket, the unborn child,
the hands of the very old. We are the winter
light peering through the kitchen window,
longing for the leaves of geraniums and sage.

We know so much! We’ve seen the room
where no one ever lives, filling with our wishes
and desires. Our small boat drifts across the river.
The face we love forms slowly on the waves.

(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)

White Chrysanthemums

A few more prose-poems are poking their heads out. "White Chrysanthemums" came quickly the other day, a rewriting of a poem from twenty years ago. Only the last line remains from the original poem.

I'm thinking of calling the new sequence I Didn't Come Here to Meet You, which I feel reflects some of the Zen and Sufi influences in the poems. Let me know what you think of the title.

WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUMS

I didn’t come here to meet you, but here you are,
and the world is better for it. I don’t know if we’re
male or female, black or white. These are questions
the cricket never ponders.

For now the snow and ice are on the garden, so the
blossoms will have to wait. I remember the black
dahlias nodding their heads in the wind. And the
white chrysanthemums, each bloom as radiant as a
human face in love.

(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)