You are sitting open
down huddling on the
Sun
under a fur tree.
Silently you carry spring
limp roots sprouting
stroking bluets
singwishstarworms.
Yes we touch.
I perceive eyes
close/shut.
Heaving breath
equals all the
beautifully frail
sleeping people
touching
trembling.
My soul
forever
understands
the rain.
I used to with a glance and
calculations of forestry
know the age of all the
trees.
A moth fluttering
in a flash
from door
to porch.
Hungry ants
all over the
porch &
the hummingbird
feeder.
Snails on the column-
black against a
backdrop of white-
The Mockingbird-
the name we gave
him eludes my
mind like crafty
fireflies that
refuse to be
put in a jar-
pretends to
be a quail
bob white
bob white
And I am
missing you
right now
tonight.
“Where did the Praying
Mantix- Bojangles!- go?”
You asked.
I replied.
“Or the elusive white
tiger swallowtail
butterfly- you’ve
seen him twice!”
You are sleeping.
Are you dreaming?
And you made me a
bracelet from a
single piece of
white
thread
breaded. Your
longhair now in
headbands, and
what do you call those
hair claw things?
Clips?
Gravel crunching
and a springwaterjug
of rainwater- that
first summer rain-
later today I will
wash your feet
in the keys to
the rain.
In Oklahoma the trains
were choragic- now
it is frogs after it
rains, dog howls,
and sometimes
silence. I miss
those train
whistle
harmonies
dogwalking
housesitting-
you are asleep.
Coyote populations
are on the rise up
and down the east
coast ecologists say,
Poetry of a three fold
consciousness- mayhap
more- Robert Bly’s idea
of leaping poetry from
a post modernist
perspective.
Ducks- ducks wings whistling-
and we really need to wash
the dogs- the Razmanian
Devil’s feet stink- and
poor old Boo-
blind,
deaf,
dementia,
&
severe arthritis-
he will not like
a bath at all.
The now is all there
ever is, but it never
hurts to plan happy
explosions
now
&
then.
Now it is time to scrub
the porch, then waking
you up, dog medication,
and then a bath.
There is some warm sky waiting
for me full of her sweet blue
fire, blue machined hills
and telephone days.
Her hidden arctic glass
images buried deep in her
sweet mind have
become essential
to my heart.
“Will you please take my fire
skin in the dark?” she asks
like a bird between the moon
and sky on a dark winter night
of snow falling.
I become a green blossom dream
laughing and floating through
her window on the breeze, for
in my heart she always makes
it spring.
My Grandmother
was covered with snow
while spring lay dreaming
of
gentle flowers.
Flowers, those strange
and often dead friends
of spring
and romance
looked out from whatever
balconies nature
might provide onto
so many emerald valleys
thoughts slung
out into the woods
then tripping downward
in seclusion.
Hearts as light as
his oaken name
which seemed deepened
by his father’s passing.
His broken words echoed
in that instant. Hearing
them as if in sleep
lumbering. His mind ceased
swiftly at her demand as she
ascended the interior corridors,
so slowly the impression
she left reminded
him of which walls
could chain him.
He thought of her love
as priceless
therefore the guardians
never slept on their watch.
She closed the largest of
her little fingers around his
heart and with an unknown
smile given she seemed
to beckon with a rustle
as he was hanging secretly
in a resting-place.
It had been a killing thing,
surprised ruinous
generations lost in
those marble sheets.
A stranger remembered
and smiled at the stones
which he misunderstood,
and took for an ominous
sign. Something at a turn
in the passage ahead
looked upward.
He turned and looked
over his shoulder
noiselessly,
all the sounds were empty.
She knew the many calculations
of the knife,
its full blade about
to be stepped
up from the point.
Out in the hallway walked swords.
Her eyelashes had mastered every
meaning, and none suspected a
war was going on below them.
A simple study of storms and
seven hats
turned to dust and
forming, a village of strangers
and smiling Saints which would be
made smooth by the centuries.
