Assuage with pen ye troubadours | Lorraine Caputo

Assuagement

I had awakened
my hand aching
from words yet
to be expressed

& foretelling
an all-day rain
that spilled into
the courtyard
outside my door

It felt like an 
autumn day,
dried palm fronds
blown groundward
by the wind

This all-night rain
continues to flow
across the patio
outside my door

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With Pen

With pen 
in hand, I write
one thought…after one thought
creating images, music
with these words, rhythmic scribbles on this page…
clearing my soul of memories
that eat away at my
peace…write, write, sing
with pen

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Troubadours

Like mediaeval troubadours
we are keeping vigil
in these hours,
I awaiting the matins
& ye reciting your lauds.

Through this silence
your poem sails
to me…

& another…

Ay,
I write,
So you’re having one of those
middle-of-the-night visits
by the Muses


I drift away
to other sites.…


& when I return,
four more messages
from your keyboard-pen
on screen-vellum glowing
in the darkness.
I read them,
stepping a bit further
back in time
with each.

You are right, you
understand, you
overstand as well,
says the third…
& the fourth
a laud
for me, for us
poets who own the Moon.…

I spill my tears to ye,
Oh brother wandering
troubadour,
careful not to
short-circuit
my pen.


There are those who envy
my travelling-writing life,
errant through these
southern tropics, verdant
jungles, snowy
towering heights, breathless
seas—

& there is I who envy
your life, devoted troubadour, the
World Poet,
traversing continents, across
seas,
able to survive
with your words
created like prayers,
lauds & laments
prickling the souls, the
hearts, the minds.…


How, I do not know.…
I want to ask ye,
brother troubadour,
How do ye do it?

…but I don’t…


I don’t want to stop,
I confess to ye,
my matins arriving
with the dawn’s twilight,
hours before yours. . . .
I want to continue
to do this work the
Creator has given me to do
in this lifetime
(the same as ye…
we, troubadours
of this XXIst century…)
I want to continue a-wandering
& a-writing, performing
like our mediaeval brethren.

But, nay, they who
I entertain don’t want
to pay, to tip even,
nor a bed nor a meal. . . .

I want to ask ye,
there in the land
from which I am exiled,
ye, a strange stranger in a strange land,
How…?
Can ye teach me?

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©2023 Lorraine Caputo
All rights reserved

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Lorraine Caputo…

…is poet-translator-travel writer who has works appearing in over 400 journals worldwide and 23 collections of poetry–including the upcoming In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2022) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). Her writing has been nominated for the Best of the Net. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.

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Latin American Wanderer

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins

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