Poems from the Collection

Open Fields

"I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands . . ."
-W.B. Yeats, " The Song of Wandering Aengus"

Don't get me started. The poet in me will never stop walkin
uncharted paths, through radish and mustard, and all the tall
weeds, their faces haloed, each petal an alm, a stone, a prayer,
so easily ripped through by fingers, chewed by caterpillars
green as summer. You tell me I'm making this up, this field
stretching between the freeway and the new buildings, once
four dilapidated houses. You say it's plowed; you say they're
getting ready for cement. I laugh. The flowers have never
stood so vivid, have never emanated sweeter spice, have never
spoken in bolder voices-trills of loved ones, chiming tones of
strangers, purple hearts for faces. There is nothing to do now
but to enter, on foot, at dusk, when the moths invite silver over
each small pool. Here, I am alone. Here, my hair is a single
flame. It is no matter that no one notices, no concern that I am
only fire passing through this world.

Lost Orchard

I was born so long ago
that the fertile, flaming peaches
of the trees that nurtured me
have been picked and eaten, picked and eaten
until that beauty is a bare stretch
on the path to the heartland
where little brown flowers peer into gone leaves
and white wolves flow around the trunks
until it snows.

Peach Seed's Treatise

Truly all there is
is letting go,
the way a seed must
sprout
somehow knowing
on the other end of its ife
it will become
The Godhead
hung with luscious goblets
for the golden, humming masses
rushing toward essence.

Praise From the Introduction by W.F. Lantry

…I've spent a lifetime thinking about what poetry is, and how to write it. But even now, her work is still changing my ideas. Try this: ‘I placed upon my wall a painting of a door into another home.' That's exactly it, isn't it: a door into a realm we can only sense. An eternal realm we know must be there. It's what James Wright mentioned: ‘At the touch of my hand, the air fills with delicate creatures from the other world.' And the roses Celia Drill writes of are the gateways to that other world: ‘It's good to remember/there's beauty behind the veil, and to know/I could reach through, touch the petals, bring the/wild things home.

. . .Reading her lines, I can almost feel my own heart as it "bursts into petals." Listen to this: ‘The moon trills back, flute. Every night of my life, we have sung to each other. Our song is always the same. I intone be safe. I light a candle for you. She lilts starlight encircles me like angels. I will live forever. ‘ This is what makes poems eternal, and she knows it. ‘I will never stop singing with the moon.'

It's so hard to choose {a favorite poem.} Which is your favorite flower in the garden? Will your favorite be the same as tomorrow? But let's try this: ‘Stars floating in clouds like the breath of white lilac. Like ghosts appearing when all are asleep: they are hungry; they crave earth's music. They want to bed down like rain does in sand, in soil, in the body. In me, empty of all but sun and stars.' Or this, ‘Within me: starlight drunk while walking night's roads.' Or this: ‘I am always listening with the unfurling rose of my inner ear.' These are the things poets truly know. These are the journeys they actually take. These are the things they deeply hear. And Celia Drill is a true poet.

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