Tiff Dressen: California Poets Part 8, Two Poems

Tiff Dressen

January 8th, 2025

California Poets: Part VIII

Tiff Dressen

Two Poems

Poem for Epiphany #3

            (for Colleen Lookingbill)

Ruby crowned

kinglets dash

and flit near

our window

I watch the fiber

optic angel

of death  (yes, that’s

what you called it)

lowered to the

sidewalk men

in their buckets

above yawp

stare at the

sky message from

a friend appears “I will

always miss her,

though now she feels

far away (in

another part

of the galaxy)”

I want to write

a poem for the

songbird fever

dream set in

tiger pose poem

for “the neutral eye

of heaven” for the

sun at 200 kilometers

per second poem

for the solar system

orbiting the milky

way every 230

million earth years

pulling this poem

along with it

singing the black bar

below the wingbar

bringing myrrh to

mortality scented

olive-green carried

in the claws

Poem for Epiphany #4

“I wish the idea of time would drain out of my cells and leave me quiet on this shore.”

                                                                                                              –Agnes Martin

1.

We are navigators,

even if by mind. I watch

my cat. She naps in a

puddle of rare

sunlight. We wait

for more rain.

January is biblical.

I dream I’m building 

a petite ship

I call “night ark.”

  2.

At the museum cafe bar

the man next to me

reads a book about the lives

of Chinese hermits.

I think about small

insects preserved

in amber silence.

I prepare myself

to go into

the world to

carry silence like

a resin bubble

a new organ

   3.

         Walking across

         the frozen lake

         I follow a trail

         tiny paws and

         hint of tail

         or feather I think

         of ice as another

         silence shroud

         between me

         and a god swimming

         beneath my feet

         I can only sense

         presence I think

         the albedo effect is

         a miracle how

         bright the day

         becomes

4.    

        She soaked white

        and luminous stretch

        of canvas the feeling

        of snow banking

        as if it were alive

        in that moment

        every moment I

        bothered to look

        it was there

        with its atomic

        blitz and shiver

        asking me

        to awaken

Author Bio:

Tiff Dressen's most recent book of poems Of Mineral was published by Nightboat Books in 2022. They live in Oakland and work at UC Berkeley. They are currently reading Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith.