Two Poems by Gordon Marshall

Photo of Deb Priestly and Gordon Marshall by Bill Perrault



New Orders
for Deb Priestley

You spin from blushing brush to fountain pen
Your brush dipped in the deepest wound of all,
The endless store of crimson in your soul
Flooding flora in your leonine den,
The ultra-violet couch against the window
Shining light in fusion on the wall
Out of the bright-blue studio picture stall.
Your thread of double love goes through a spindle
To stitch a sheet of lines, a quilt of borders,
A sampler that gives woman a voice,
A melody, a loving Sapphic laugh,
A new faith where she can take new orders,
A psychedelic Phantom V Rolls Royce
Like Lennon rode with Yoko: orb and staff.


Return
for Susan Deer Cloud

Exotic flower blown from native land,
Blue-stoned wood, where water over chalk
Cascades in arboreal worlds of the Mohawk,
Reciting, you raise a receiving hand
Illustrating filaments of words
That you mint into money as you talk
Amorous coins giving bounce to your walk
As you repay your people and their herds
Of buffalo; minks, foxes, wild horses,
Coyotes pushed into suburban places,
Wolves on the loose in the city square,
Jack rabbit ensnared, scared and sacred hare:
You give ethereal charge to earthy forces
Paint an animal stripe on human faces.