Oeuvre, Spirulina, Mugwomp

By Teresa Cader

(posted Wednesday, June 3, 1998)

To hear the poet read "Oeuvre, Spirulina, Mugwomp," click here.

                              I

Play dates, player piano, playbill, Shakespeare's plays,
my younger daughter can't say play, only pay. So she pays
and pays with fervent concentration, while I work and work

and worry the day away. One does not work the piano,
or the violin. One does not create a body
of play. An oeuvre we call it, not her life's play, not the drive

that kindled, or destroyed, or turned to gold the impulse,
threaded to the bone like a nerve path, that wild desire to let
the work play itself out, regardless of the price.

                              II

Spirulina, food of the sea, urchin-fodder, source,
photosynthetic blossom-leaf, dredged
from the deep cold waters where humpbacks

gully and sing, you surface beside the toothpaste
like an accusation at a funeral. Swallow you
and I will learn the secrets floating in those depths,