Heige Kim

NEVERTHELESS

you’ve seen a strawberry
    that’s had a struggle; yet
    was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
    fish for the multitude
    of seeds.  What better food

than apple-seeds–the fruit
    within the fruit–locked in
    like counter-curved twin

hazel-nuts?  Frost that kills
    the little rubber-plant-
    leaves of kok-saghyz-stalks, can’t

harm the roots; they still grow
    in frozen ground.  Once where
    there was a prickly-pear-

leaf clinging to barbed wire,
    a root shot down to grow
    in earth two feet below;

as carrots form mandrakes
    or a ram’s-horn root some-
    times.  Victory won’t come

to me unless I go
    to it; a grape-tendril
    ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times,–so
    the bound twig that’s under-
    gone and over-gone, can’t stir.

The weak overcomes its
    menace, the strong over-
    comes itself.  What is there

like fortitude! What sap
    went through that little thread
    to make the cherry red! 

I’ve always had a book of Marianne Moore’s poems in my studio.  It’s been buried in a box since I moved and I found it again recently.  I’ve used this book as a brush before and the evidence of the horizon blue color I used is still there…  Unlike any other color, the sky blue, that delicate light, warm blue (I think Constable nailed it!) ages so beautifully.  The yellowing of paint over time doesn’t diminish the intensity of the color but rather adds warmth.  Well, I needed “nevertheless” today.

(-_-)hk