Natalie Keller

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A Wrong Interpretation

The kind of rain she stands in
requires no umbrella; her job,
simply, to get soaked -
mine, to write about it.
The elements love her, love to know
that someone like her exists.
My pen loves her,
loves to know that a love
like that is worth existing.
The storm is her monologue;
the world spends its time wrongly
interpreting it, but she forgives it
enough to go on repeating.

Please Understand

Please understand that there is something
effectively tucked away in these folds
of mine, something dark and dangerous
and perhaps a bit insane with the surprise
of itself, and it’s black and covered with
the coal-dust of everyday wonderings and
I can’t promise you won’t be touched if
you peer even a little bit into those places
of me where it’s ripped open the bars and
exposed itself to the Out There.

Insentient She

There is no poetry to
be given to poetry,
that cannot sit bathed
in candlelight by a desk
reading itself.
For all things I have pity;
lightning paths in her eyes
like stained glass windows of
a cathedral, unknowingly holy,
she sits upon her consciousness
like a pebble in a stream,
a thing without lungs gasping for air,
and there is no telling her of
the beauty of swimming.

What I Don't Understand About
​the Universe

They say light is the absence of darkness
and life is the absence of death,
but how can love be the absence of hatred?
How can love be anything less than a
drawer full of handwritten letters from my
shaking, unnerved hands to your
crescent moon eyes, taking me in
like a night above the water?
How can love be a leap,
a flick of a light-switch away
from you being my entire world
or just a stranger down the street?
There are no simple things in this life,
love alone being the most complicated thread -
strung through us all until we hang like
paper people on a wire, shaken until
there is nothing left to us a but shells
and a promise that something once
lived in them.

The Verdict

She came as if from a great cloud,
her hair a mass of constellations,
her skin a milky hue.
It was morning time, and the mortals
were just waking -
pouring their coffee, ironing their shirts,
and reading their newspapers.
She looked upon them like a teacher
might look upon a misguided student,
with distaste and with remorse,
because they had, after all, missed
the entire point,
and she didn’t feel like explaining
it all over again.
She knew that with a touch of her hand
their world would disintegrate into nothing,
but she was wise, the cloud woman,
and understood the very cruelest punishment
was to let them be,
so she turned and vanished back
into the sky from whence she came,
leaving them to their
lives and their
ironing boards

Artificiality

You were in everything this morning.
You were in my coffee,
great swirls of cream
and sugar,
almost artistic -
a touch of Van Gogh
to go with breakfast.
You were on the sidewalk,
like chalk,
staining everything, and
when I saw the pictures
the children drew with you,
I cried until it hurt,
because you are too precious
to be smeared so carelessly
around like that.
You were hanging in the trees,
like shirts on a clothesline,
blowing in the wind
as it flung you everywhere,
not caring where you
landed, or if it hurt
when you did.
You need to stop giving
yourself up to the world
so much, my dear.
Now you’ve gone and spiraled
into everything,
and into
nothing.

Open Letter to Defeatists

Some declare there is no hope.
No hope? I say.
Tell that to the flower that
has waited through the centuries
for this precise moment to come alive
under the window outside
my kitchen.
​

Natalie Keller's profile

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The Search

I might be a fool.
Sitting on a bench beside
some railroad tracks, waiting
for someone to jump out in
front of me – clever.
Wait long enough and the
world gives you something
to cry about. You wouldn’t
recognize me here, but you’d
know what I’m doing, what
we’ve always been doing,
searching for the last line
of this poem.

Imaginings

It is strange that the aroma of a rose
drawn up in thought should be
much sweeter than
the flower I hold
in my hand now.
Imaginings are too often
better than their realities,
as these ancient dreams do tell,
so I’ve made up my mind
to stay here, splayed out
amongst everything unreal,
with the aerial scent
of roses on my fingertips,
to imagine the world
away.

Stained

You are such an enchantment.
There is no stone, pebble,
or shard of glass in this world
that doesn’t know your name,
doesn’t wear it on them like
a sheen left from some
late summer rain,
like the fog of a breath
captured in a mirror,
metastasized into memory,
splattered across everything
that breathes.
I carry you on me,
the touch of your hand
against mine leaving
violent stains like bruises,
but given with the gentlest
of caresses,
a photograph in flesh,
to tell that you were here,
that you were on everything.
The sky is blue because
you’ve wept it your sorrows and
the sunset is red because
you’ve kissed it your love.
The world spins on,
oblivious to its maker
as well as the man who
slipped in, invisible
in the night, and
left it so lovingly
stained.

In Loving Memory

The rain whispered to me all night,
speaking in the unspoken voice,
a story, begging me to write it down.
I grabbed my notebook and went
to translate from rain to English
but the language was choppy
and resonated dripping noises,
Plunk, plink, plunk,
too pure and simple to be poured
into words, the rain came faster, faster,
Stop! My hand a maddened whirl,
until it was full-on storm,
leaving only a drenched
corpse of a poem
on the paper.
I fear I have lost a work of brilliance,
and yes, indeed I have,
as I walk out this morning and
find it strewn in the grass,
morning dewdrops clinging to the blades,
puddles of words at my feet.

Flash Apocalypse

A thousand moon-streaked sidewalks,
a parade of fairies frozen mid-dance,
a flame held in stillness, captivity,
a patch of wall the light hasn’t yet reached,
the moth with its wings quieted,
the world has slowed until the grains of sand
have ceased to move underneath us and the
sun stands, at a final peace, on its high pedestal;
the rivers have stopped in their pursuit of the waterfall,
the bullets released from their guns hang suspended in the air
without hope of ever reaching their targets,
the chirps of the birds have been caught in their throats -
let no wild thing sing, let no man speak, let there
be a time for everything to be understood,
and let the air go untouched, let the oxygen we breathe
have a chance to breathe, let the world sit
quiet for a moment to take in what it has become.

The Quiet Life

She is nothing more than
she claims to be;
there is only ever the
rocking chair, the knitting,
and the folding of clothes.
She turns to me now,
an aged woman,
and smiles a toothless
smile, saying
What more is there?
Everything.
Everything.

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