Patricia Fargnoli

Poem of the Week, by Patricia Fargnoli

Posted on by alisonmcghee

On December 4, 2010, I sent out the Patricia Fargnoli poem below. One of my writer friends, K, wrote back that it knocked her socks off. I wrote back that I agreed, and that in my ongoing efforts to become one with winter I had memorized it. I also wrote that I missed K and maybe we should collaborate on a book together.

K: A book together! My heart sings! Can it have a fox in it?
Me: I do believe we should have a fox in our book! A small orange flame streaking his way through the snow.
K: Maybe this poem should be the epigraph to our book!
Me: Yeah!

That was four and a half years ago, and we have been working on our novel –Maybe a Fox– all this time. At one point, about six months ago, K and I happened to be in the same city at the same time and we went out for drinks and dinner.

K, after one hefty margarita: You know what? This book nearly killed me.
Me, after the same hefty margarita: That makes two of us, sister.
K: If our friendship can survive the monumental struggle of writing this book together, it can survive anything.
Me: Agreed! A toast to us!

Then we ordered another round and toasted the fact that we both still love this poem, we both still love our monumental effort of a book, and we both still love each other. No small feats, any of  them.

Should the Fox Come Again to My Cabin in the Snow
– Patricia Fargnoli

Then, the winter will have fallen all in white
and the hill will be rising to the north,
the night also rising and leaving,
dawn light just coming in, the fire out.

Down the hill running will come that flame
among the dancing skeletons of the ash trees.
I will leave the door open for him.

 

For more information on Patricia Fargnoli, please click here.

 

Poem of the Week, by Patricia Fargnoli

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Roofmen
– Patricia Fargnoli

Over my head the roofmen are banging shingles into place
and over them the sky shines with a light that is
almost past autumn, and bright as copper foil.

In the end I will have something to show for their hard labor–
unflappable shingles, dry ceilings, one more measure of things
held safely in a world where safety is impossible.

In another state, a friend tries to keep on living
though his arteries are clogged,
though the operation left a ten-inch scar

and, near his intestines, an aneurysm blossoms
like a deformed flower. His knees and feet
burn with constant pain.

We go on. I don’t know how sometimes.
For a living, I listen eight hours a day to the voices
of the anxious and the sad. I watch their beautiful faces

for some sign that life is more than disaster–
it is always there, the spirit behind the suffering,
the small light that gathers the soul and holds it

beyond the sacrifices of the body. Necessary light.
I bend toward it and blow gently.
And those hammerers above me, bend into the dailiness

of their labor, beneath concentric circles: a roof of sky,
beneath the roof of the universe,
beneath what vaults over it.

And don’t those journeymen
hold a piece of the answer– the way they go on
laying one gray speckled square after another,

nailing each down, firmly, securely.


—
For more information on Patricia Fargnoli, please click here: http://www.joefargnoli.com/
—
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts