Impressions of W.H. Auden by Heidi Seaborn

Portrait of W.H. Auden, by George Platt Lynes (b. USA), 1948.

Impressions of W.H. Auden
 
You grew: the catching fire,
singing like a drunk until the tavern closes.
We learned to hum the Star Spangled Banner,
place bets on your poems like thoroughbred horses.
They too can riddle the air with their hoofs,
corral all the deaf into hearing, one ear to the ground,
the grunt and rumble of a broken earth.
 
You bore words and poetry, a child, teethed on the new sound.
When you split open: an over-ripe plum and wasted into the distance,
we shuffled breath through our throats like asthmatics.
Now as your arms comb the air in their muteness,
our faces bleed into the midnight flicks.
 
Yet milk steams thick and white butterflies flirt
like Frenchmen.  For words, it is still an open curtain.

Heidi Seaborn

Heidi Seaborn is in her Poet 2.0 incarnation. She wrote prodigiously in her youth then stopped. After three decades, three kids, four marriages, 27 moves and a successful business career, she started writing again with the advantage of all that experience. Today Heidi lives in Seattle, and benefits from the mentorship of David Wagoner. Her poetry can be found in Puget Soundings, Concrete Wolf’s Ice Dream Anthology,  the Flying South 2016 Anthology,  Fredericksburg Literary & Arts Review, the Voices Project, in the book Fast Moving Water and elsewhere.