"Words' Worth" Poetry Readings
Poets at the Culture, Arts, and Parks Committee
of the Seattle City Council.
Needling Seattle by Pieter Zilinsky
Knit and purling
Steelhead and heron
Flip and twirl
Shear
Holes in blue
Plane and truck
Trolley and crane
Swish and glide
Crease
Lines in rain.
Barge and hull
Cirrus and tide
Crowd
Sand with shape.
Crag and tower
Tunnel and thwart
Puncture
Lullaby moons.
Cut and casting
Fir and trout
Crash and fly
Dash
Dust on silt
Lift and step
Canal and lake
Rock and dam
Lock
Wrinkles in fog.
Tug and seine
Chain and lead
Draw
Jet Pure scound
Tanker and sail
Diesel and steam
Baker and Rainier
Seattle on stilts
Fogplay by Pieter Zilinsky
When fog plays with day -
light
and rubs its hands against
hills,
and lets its fingers sift
crevices, erasing there
a crest,
easing here
a valley,
the water in the Sound laughs at the light;
touching only
its echoes and not
blue or
green or
brown and silver bodies.
Dusk and Sunrise by Pieter Zilinsky
Last dusk,
a blue notepaper flecked with soot.
consorts of crows drifted through a pavane
danced by a half-clad odalisque,
the moon.
They called for "more,Ó "MoreÓ
until she split
and they dissolved
into their own darkness.
This sunrise,
peppered and jeered by junkos
bluejays and finally gulled,
the sun
slipped on a frozen pond,
and cracked its face
and their voices
to diamonds.
Cedar and Venus by Degrees by Pieter Zilinsky
Yesterday
at 230 degrees west by southwest
Venus in the crepuscule bent above
the dimpled cones,
barked limbs
akimobo arms
and stiff crown of a five decade cedar.
Tonight
Venus beyond degrees displays her diadem.
Her evergreen attendant,
now needleless, coneless, limbless
by dint of steel saw and dust blowing,
uncovers the soft hills, the flat breast
of a sleeping Puget Sound
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