Time to savor them all

Yesterday's poem marked the last of Evelyn Coffey's work that I have. I have run across titles of others and so hope eventually to locate them and publish them here. I am indebted to the Daniels family of Michigan for their love gift to Evelyn in saving the poems that have appeared on this blog and for giving me access to them.

Go back and enjoy the poems that are posted here, and be enriched by my cousin's zest for life, her empowering faith, and her Irish gift with words.

Evelyn's story was detailed in the first three or four entries.

It's been a beautiful journey for me.

Cousin Pat

The Street-Car Promenade

The clanging gong of midnight sounds.

Now trolleys, steaming hard and fast,

Their schedules filled, with hearty bounds

In panic rush to meet its blast,

Each car more eager than the last.

The day well done, the merry crew

At twelve each night hold rendezvous.

Evelyn Coffey

Thunderstorm in February

Broken

Are the winter-white skies,

Broken and desolate

Like my heart.

Beat, dull-fingered rain,

No-silver-singing rain,

Beat upon this heart’s blanched windows

Like multiple hammers

On an empty drum.

No tinkle in you now –

Flat now –

Stolen the music

On the rolling rim

Of each drop

Falling.

Sound, thunder!

Cut, lightening,

Sharp and shrill!

Cut like the sharp,

Shrill blade

Of a saw.

Make way for spring –

Carve a path in my heart

For spring –

Spring, throbbing

In sky as a room throbs

When a cello

Stops singing.

Burn me!

Burn winter’s shadows

From my heart.

Evelyn Coffey

To Brown Eyes

Amber-voiced chancel

Of a white soul, what holy

Of holies lights you?

Evelyn Coffey

To a Blackbird

Black- feathered sheaves that slap harsh air

with waving wings dart like spooks

through dismal, gray-spun skies, I watch

your silhouette with dainty flare

secreted on a dark-barked tree.

Your plumage melts in shadows deep

as night. Unsought and unobserved,

your glee may pour its mirthful cup

into the snow-drenched ground below,

or soar the heights of powdered dome,

cloud-barred from view. Abandonment

is yours. Envy is mine, whose wings

are bolted to earth’s stagnant clay.

Evelyn Coffey

The Secret Heart

Across the years he could recall

His father one way best of all.

In the stillest hour of night

The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire

With his great hands full of fire.

The man had struck a match to see

If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark

His love had kindled in the dark.

His two hands were curved apart

In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,

A bare heart on his hidden one,

A heart that gave out such a glow

No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face

Too tender for the day to trace.

One instant, it lit all about,

And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one

To know that hands held up the sun.

Evelyn Coffey

The Sea

To Fred W. Boltz, Lt. Com. U.S. Navy

The sea

Has a way of building a man . . . . .

The sea

With its deafening, massive span.

Out of the stillness . . . in the stark,

Dim spread of colossal dark,

The soul of a man has room to grow,

White

As the clean, white whip of the surf;

Right

As a ship’s sure cleft of the sea.

The sky

Has a way of molding a man . . . . .

The sky

With its winging, cloudy clan.

Out of the twisted winds, the wonder

Of lightning-laden strides of thunder,

The mind of a man has room to grow,

Wise

As the stars that cradled silence,

Eyes

Circling truth as gulls sight prey.

The soul

Has a way of finding a man . . . .

The soul

With its fearless, mystic plan.

Out of stardust and ocean foam,

Grinding clay and pregnant loam,

It shapes the noble heart of man,

True

As the sun that conquers shadows,

Blue

As the waves that burn in brine.

Salute this man of ocean’s making!

Drink him joy with singing lips.

Drink him joy with glasses breaking . . . . .

Master of men, and seas, and ships!

Evelyn Coffey

Spanish Dancer (Tanka)

Red-tipped fingers click

Castanettes while night's canvas

Flaunts bare white arms. Limp

As a fallen tree; vivid

As wine; lips tight on a rose.

Evelyn Coffey

Song of a Sailor

Ship, take me out to sea with you

Now, while the riding waves are high.

A purple cloud hangs in the sky

Below a sheaf of white and blue.

I’ll add a sailor to your crew,

A merry one, you can’t deny!

Ship, take me out to sea with you

Now, while the riding waves are high.

I’ll chop the foam that stains your view.

I’ll make the hidden anchors fly.

I’ll steer your course. I’ll even try

To calm the wind’s mad hullabaloo.

Ship, take me out to sea with you

Now, while the riding waves are high!

Evelyn Coffey

Shakespearean Sonnet

Your eyes are torches, spearing shadows in

My night. It loomed a vast and tainted ghost

On white day’s soul. Its haunting, spectral din

Harpooned my sense, reflective of a host

Of rabid things. In anguish I cried out,

And found your hand, and felt your warming smile.

All-healing dawn would put the beasts to rout,

Blue reason’s calm had said; but what a mile

On mile of dread till then! Quickly you came

With sleep-songs on your lips, and your eyes shone

As God shone in my dreams. The very same

Brown softness hallowed them. No more alone!

The alchemy of love diffuses fear,

And glowing trust emerges from its bier.

Evelyn Coffey

Sonnet (When through supreme activity)

When through supreme activity's dull hum

You feel the thudding sputter of despair,

Like solemn poundings of a savage drum

Foreboding death in sordid thoroughfare

Or hostile haunt -- a sobbing, glum lament --

A stirring, whirring drug that funnels clouds

Of siddy pitch where glamorous clouds were spent;

When stumbling, mumbling, blundering blind crowds

Have hissed the surging sculpture that your brain

Has wrought, travailed -- remember while thus prone

To anguished earth, while suffering's tortured strain

Bowling your shoulders into muck -- alone --

The very earth in stolid throe has thought,

And Love paid Death the ransom that it sought.

Evelyn Coffey