"WHITE LOTUS"
copyright 2006 by ROBIN M. BUEHLER
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
A poem by Miriam Sagan
Forced bulbs will flower
On winter's sill. And give what?
A sense of ownership of beauty?
It's a fix—
Descend all night
Through the trapdoor
Beneath the bed.
Locked in by a father, the king
The exit is still there.
Not just body, or the imagination
But something external
To our immediate fate
Like God, or the sea.
It's there, and we
Go down those stairs
To underworld woods
Loveliest ever seen
Silver, gold, and crystalline.
Argentine cobwebbed leaves, deciduous (this is artificial)
Pasted valentines for the dead (sentimental)
Dropping the unaddressed letter
Into the slotted box (magic) (undeliverable)
Posted with an already canceled stamp
Or facsimile in glassine envelope (sacrificial)
Which represents the real thing
But is not—the real thing.
12 dancing princesses
Are who? Or what?
Months of the year, or
Starry zodiac
A dozen Babylonian beasts
The hours from noon to midnight
Who descend
No single Persephone
But girl gang.
Every night, all night
Silver leaf, and golden bough
A tree in snow
With diamond twigs
Across the mirrored lake...
Or in the bar
Beneath the El
Oil slicks rainbow
On a rainy street
Neon, and the EXIT
Sign lit up
At the back of the room
Four letters in red.
Speak, if not of an end to the story
Then of a solitary
Departure.
Copyright 2006 by Miriam Sagan
Miriam writes:
I've been obsessed with the Twelve Dancing Princesses since childhood and written about them off and on. I've loved that although locked in and dominated by their circumstances, they escape imaginatively and literally. I did a bit of research—sources, psychology—for this poem. But essentially what interested me is that I suddenly saw them outside, and in the modern world. I'd also been making some collages with silver leaves which reminded me of the three woods in the fairy tale.
Miriam Sagan is the author of more than twenty books, including Searching for a Mustard Seed: A Young Widow's Unconventional Story (memoir, Quality Words in Print, 2004; Winner Best Memoir from Independent Publishers, 2004), Rag Trade (poetry, La Alameda, 2004), The Widow's Coat (poetry, Ahsahta Pres, 1999), The Art of Love (poetry, La Alameda Press, 1994), Coastal Lives (fiction, Center Press, 1991), and Unbroken Line: Writing in the Lineage of Poetry (nonfiction, Sherman Asher, 1999), which Robert Creeley called "A work of quiet compassion and great heart." With Sharon Niederman, Miriam is the editor of New Mexico Poetry Renaissance (Red Crane, 1994; Winner of the Border Regional Library Association Award and Honorable Mention, Benjamin Franklin Award), and with Joan Logghe of Another Desert: The Jewish Poetry of New Mexico (Sherman Asher, 1998). She and her late husband Robert Winson wrote Dirty Laundry: 100 Days in a Zen Monastery, a joint diary (La Alameda, 1997; New World Library, 1999). Her work has appeared internationally in two hundred magazines. She writes book columns for the Santa Fe New Mexican and New Mexico Magazine, and a poetry column for Writer's Digest. Miriam directs the creative writing program at the Santa Fe Community College, and has taught at the College of Santa Fe, University of New Mexico, Taos Institute of the Arts, Aspen Writer's Conference, around the country, and online. She has held residency grants at Yaddo and MacDowell, and is the recipient of a grant from The Barbara Deming Foundation/Money for Women and a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency. Miriam can be reached via email at: MSagan1035@aol.com.
