May 29
The Cattails

Near the end of the spring as the snow disappears,
all along our bare highways the old cattails appear.
In the wind, like old souls, they ebb and they flow,
as the grass grows much greener in the earth just below.
Not much left there to look at but they all share a tale,
just inside its thick outside, shiny white seeds prevail.
While last summer's bright flowers disappeared and grew old,
Cattails strong little structure braced for the cold.
Not ripe in its color no soft scent to bare,
it stands proud in its marshes knowing it must prevail.
Like a soldier stripped bare in the trenches they quiver,
Their devotion to live makes them fight while all wither.
So next summer as you walk in a field filled with flowers,
Remember that most of their beauty will cower.
The strong ones, these cattails will just carry on.
Unbreakable they ebb and the flow as our gaze looks beyond. Hardship is honor they forever live on.

In the marshy lands where Alligators sun themselves and catfish swim in dark murky water. The saw grass grows and the Cattails weave in the wind. When the marsh breezes blow through them, they whistle and sing a song. They speak of long boats and lazy days that have long since gone. When all that a child needed to be happy was a cane pole and a fishing line. In a land that once untouched by the hands of time. Though storms have blown away sand bars and tourist have tried to come in, at the heart of the marsh land change is seldom seen. The Alligators and the catfish, they are still the same and if you go deep enough in, you can still find good fishing cane. So despite what the world says, there is still a place where life moves slow. Just take a trip down to where the Cattails grow.

(a travelogue)

He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts

A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
     timeworn love seat,
     rubbed smooth as
     the crystalline waters
     of  half-moon lake

Lingering for a while  ―  
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s  
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
     arousing the urgent
     call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
    on half-moon lake

The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails,  and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows

     He  sat  quietly ...
     time out of mind ―

tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching  them  each  again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was

Seeing their sparkly tracers  
trail-out above the cattails,
     from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
     on half-moon lake

A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming  
enchantingly with the grace
     of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
     the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
     slipping through
     a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―  
disappearing like a fleeting moment
     waning deep aneath
     a subtle silent wake.

When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...

     but hearken !
… an interceding
     long drawn out wail  
     echoed  a feral ache
     across the stillness,
     breaking the silence ―

as the shadow reappeared;
     his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
     as black and white
     as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
     lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon

Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake


harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more

She was born of a forest
And rests her heart  
Shallow in pooled dreams
Dripping further than her tears
Falling to soft earth.

She eats rosed lilies
And pickled cattails
All while
Her footsteps leave no absence known
As her lithe nymph body melts into foliage.

And her arms permanently reach
Into the void of
All unknowable things.
Grasping at gossamer threads,
Like thoughts that can't be spun together.

there are cattails by the water.
she is watching, and she closes her eyes.
the wind caresses her hair, picks it up and lays it back down.
she lies down, and she opens her eyes.

above her, blocking out the sun, blocking
out everything but the scent of sunshine,
the caress of the wind,
and then the gentlest kiss of hesitation.

standing straight at pond's edge, cattails—
brown corn dogs on ***** blonde stalks
several with cream colored bursting guts
hang below sky waiting on sail
there, a red-wing black bird clings
as Cirque du Soleil actor's acrobatic feat
trilling its own musical accompaniment

other cattails tilt triangle shapes
reflected side, angle, side complexion
over water's bottomless mirror
colored autumn, by shore's tree leaves,
mallard ducks, and brooding clouds
while black headed chickadees splash out
ripples of Impressionist pigments weave

-cec

A day recedes,
     I'll chase down one more night
A lamed and hobbling Spring
     tries to outrun the tide
of all the misspent months
and all this wasted time

          The northern breeze sings cold,
          it sighs through tattered topsails
          sea of questions waits.
          schools of unanswered voicemails

My footfalls share the sidewalks,
                                          steady,
sure­. Still young but glimpsing old and stumbling

Walking outside
soaked lungs need some new air
I'm nervous and shaking
fold the map, don a blank stare
my days wearing on
               fill 'em up with a fool's words
               I'm saltwashed, stuck and
               peeling paint off my memory
               for now.

A day's been seized--
          a metered length of life
Can't place a price on Fall
          and can't outrun the tide
of these layered seasons
as his time unwinds

          The eastern wind comes hard
          and shreds through mended mainsails
          river of answers dried
          so ask the waving cattails.

His footfalls know the sidewalks
                                        leaking
down sidestreets' asphalt tributaries

Walking around
A hitch in his slow gait
A ghost of our town
shuffles on with a fixed gaze,
his days playing out,
               As he strides down the sidewalks
               his life plays a film,
               flashing bright on glazed eyeballs

And I'm southbound,
4 p.m. driving Orange Street
completely drowned--
               --swore I woke up in Gimli,
                Manitoba January
                seared into my youthful memories
I'm freezerburnt
                Autumn heat, don't leave me
I'll hold your hair if you're feeling sickly,
then drive back home.
                Autumn heat, don't leave me now.

                ...Autumn heat, don't leave me now.

I am being crushed by the weight
Of warm cattails, two tons.
As the sun-kissed wooden fences make the world around me look grey- I suffocate.

“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”- Alice in Wonderland

“Everyone knows it’s a race, but no one’s sure of the finish line.”
        -Dean Young, “Whale Watch”

1a
Children rarely listen to any armchair advice from their immediate family, relatives they commonly have contact with or anyone they haven’t known for more than a couple years because in kindergarten or day care they often got gold stars just for showing up… Little glittering prizes plastered on poster boards in elementary school classrooms regardless of grades or mistakes…


1b
On the windy day when you lower the green jet-ski instead of the good one, race it to the north end, out of the safety of the bay, into the choppy waters, you’ll get bullied by the wave’s splash like the cattails of a whip. The lake will overwhelm you; you’ll inhale some of the water,  a sharp pain will course through your body as you try to breathe those short shallow breaths, which you will force yourself to do as seldom as possible. You will cough and keel over on the craft; It’s not uncommon to spit up blood; you will have to return to the dock and raise the jet-ski back onto the boatlift.  You will stub your toe on the cracks in the planking, stumble and get a splinter in the ball of your foot heading towards the deck but won’t notice. All feeling numbs against water trapped inside your lungs.


1c
Jackie Paper’s mother made him a hotdog with potato chips and served it to him on a plastic plate outside so he could enjoy it on the newly refinished deck while he watched the schooners and speedboats, stingray’s and ski-nautique’s jet in and out of the bay. He didn’t wait five minutes after he finished to fly from the deck onto the dock into the water where he free styled too far and got a cramp. His mother almost lost a son that day.



2a
If wet some recommend running around the shore of the lake until the air has thoroughly dried you off. Listening to the gulls dive and racing through the varying levels of grass on the neighbors’ unkempt lawns, in between the oaks and elms, keeping ever mindful the sticks and stones and acorns that litter the ground in lieu of stubbed toes or splinters. You will most likely fail, but you will get dry.


2b
When you **** your big toe on the zebra mussels while wading in the shallows, near the seawall beside the dock, trying to catch crayfish and minnows darting between the stones underneath the water, and the blood doesn’t stop flowing for 10 minutes and the H2O2 bubbles burgundy on the decks maple woodwork, instead of that off white color it usually bubbles, and stings something awful, don’t be a little ***** about it.  It’s your own fault for leaving your aqua-socks on the green marbled tiles in the foyer closet next to the bathroom; where you changed into your bathing suit and got the bottle of peroxide.


2c
Last winter Christopher Robbins drove his red pickup on the ice (near the island, towards the North end, where even when it’s been freezing for weeks the frozen water seldom exceeds six inches in thickness) at night and fell through.  He felt the cold water enter his lungs.  Although it was snowing and no one had noticed he survived; it took him the whole of an hour to reach the nearest house and call home; he lost his truck and suffered from severe hypothermia and acute pneumonia. At the hospital it was determined that while there was ample evidence of the early onset of frostbite in his extremities, amputation would not be necessary.


3a
While sitting Indian style on the dock next to your friends, settled on the plastic furniture, sipping whiskey and beer, comparing scars assume, no matter whose company you’re in, that yours are the smallest. Those cigarette burns running down the length of your right forearm are self-inflicted and old- reminders that you haven’t had to force yourself to breathe in quite some time.

3b
When you jump off the end of the dock you’ll forget to keep your knees loose because you were running on the wooden planks trying to avoid the white weather worn and dirtied dock chairs and worrying about getting a splinter. The water is inviting but during the summer the depth is only three feet four inches. You will roll your ankle at the very least and probably sprain it because, Like an *******, you locked your knees and jumped without looking.


3c
Two summers ago Alice was tubing behind a blue Crown Royal when she hit the wake at an awkward angle and flew head first into the water in the bay a few hundred feet off the dock at dusk. The spotter and driver simply weren’t watching and the wave-runner didn’t see her due to the advancing darkness.  She cracked her head open on the bottom of its hull; swallowed water.  She needed 70 stitches and several staples but Alice made a full recovery.


4
Mothers often tell their children to should chew their food 40 times before swallowing to aid digestion and to wait a full half hour after eating before engaging in physical activity. Especially swimming.


5
When you’re at the lake house this summer skipping stones swimming and running on the dock remember not to listen to any advice.  

If this were a race to get dry you’d be much closer to first than last.

The internal bleeding eventually stops.  The splinters all get pulled out, staples and stitches are removed, lacerations heal and the feeling returns to the fingers and toes.

The water eventually drains from the lungs and only the scars remain:

Gold stars on poster boards;

because everybody has won, and all must have prizes.

Well, why not me, I reasoned
(No surprise to friends and loved ones,
As I have always considered my time
On this spinning patch of rock
As something of a monument to the value of pragmatism)
But there were still the normal sine-wave vacillation
Between tenuous optimism and odds-driven grim reality,
Fanciful discussions of Chinese herbs and Mexican clinics
And, later still, of time frames and stock transfers,
All the while various folks attired in suits and clinic coats
Debating matters pertaining to the coda of my personal symphony
(Doing so as if yours truly wasn’t even in the room)
Until, deciding my input might be somewhat pertinent, I said
If it’s all the same to you, I would like to go home.

It was, in a sense, like getting back on an old Schwinn
(Fender dented, rubbing on the front tire just the least little bit,
The chain needing oil, grudgingly giving in
To the demands of the crank)
Sitting, unused but inordinately patient, next to the barn,
The whole notion of settling back into a pace you’d forgotten,
Like dialing back a metronome from allegro to andante
Without missing a beat or flubbing a note.
What’s more, there were the sensations you’d never made time for
While under the thumb of daily deadlines and train schedules,
Greeting you like friends you hadn’t seen for twenty years
But started gabbing with as easy as slipping on old jeans:
The scent of the lilacs, overpowering but borderline mystical,
The informal yet precise ballet of the cattails and jewelweed,
The fields of cows that, even though you know it can’t be the case,
Are populated by the same Bessie and Bossie
You taunted and pelted with watermelon as a child
(I have made it a point to proffer my apologies),
The dark, pine-choked hills,
Formidable but accessible, even comforting.
Sometimes, when I am not paying attention,
I catch myself all but tearing up,
And I say to myself, ever so softly,
As not to disturb the squirrels and the wrens,
I had almost forgotten.  Christ forgive me,
I had almost forgotten.


I’d assumed (sometimes, I can be astounded
At the full extent of my own foolishness)
That she would merely take a leave of absence;
She has, after all, an alphabet full of advanced degrees,
A rainmaker’s reputation and the billable hours to match.
Columbia and Harvard Law, after all,
But she grew up down the road just a piece in Ebensburg,
So this is all part and parcel of her as well
Hard coded in the DNA for better or worse, she’ll say,
All the while shaking her head and laughing softly.
Surely you don’t want to stay here, I’ll say,
Boorishly rational in the face of everything
Which would argue to be otherwise,
You’ve read enough Forbes and Fortune;
Altoona is dead, Johnstown is dying,
And she allows that, for a time, coming back
Was the source of some misapprehension on her part,
Until it dawned on her that on those rare occasions
It had occurred to her to glance skyward in mid-town,
She had seen faceless tiles of windows
Sufficient to sheet a Great Pyramid,
An Armageddon’s worth of angels and gargoyles in the cornices,
But she had not, even once, ever seen the stars.

Like a new river forging it's first steps, or a flower first taking bud, the end result is never clear.
It cuts through you. Carving out canyons, gorges, through what is you.
This thing will start to erode you, and it will create eddies. Stagnant moments of spinning in pointless circles surrounded by all the **** emotions bring. The drift wood of the heart.
Soon you will escape and see the new petals of flowers uncurling, nurtured by the Sun and the eddies you were so sure you would drown in.
These flowers will line the shore of your river. Of the canyons chiseled into the corners of your smile. The paths of this river will twine and twirl through everything. Breaking apart and spreading like the roots of a tree. Endlessly growing and flowing. Reconnecting in days. Years. Feet or miles. Only to trickle apart once more.
As all rivers must, so will this flower lined flow have rapids. Small ones. Large ones. Waterfalls too. Tossing and turning up the water in white froth. Dropping off the edge of cliffs. Falls you never though you could survive. But you will.

And eventually your flowers will die. Your river will end. In fruit, or nectar turned to honey. In dried petals on the shore. Or maybe a pond. A lake or reservoir. You will be swirling in pointless patterns again. Stuck. Hoping to finally be washed ashore. To dry off, laying on the thistles and dandy lions and cattails surrounding your lake.
You will not though. You will keep swirling and swirling and then you will come to understand that these weeds, these thistles and dandelions and cattails may not be the pretty flowers on the banks of your river, but the have beauty all their own.

And as is the nature of water. Of lakes and ponds; of flowers and trees, as is the nature of love; a new river will break free and spill from your sullen body of water. It will begin again. Carving new canyons. Following old. And it will grow new flowers on its shores.

Among them will be thistles.

The wetland is in its daylight beauty
the calm water mirrors the still blue sky
upon the pond among reeds and cattails
are two elegant, wild white swans
mysterious and graceful, reflecting
the charm of Thailand and her people

i remember when my mama took me up the mountain,
she told me,
"now, you are ready."
and pine and oak softly fluttered their leaves at my arrival.
there were yellow flowers,
growing wildly,
strangling the delicate blue blossoms,
made of flimsy roots and spindly bosoms.

i was the youngest in a tribe of
golden skinned people;
dreadlocks, tattoos,
moon cycles on the sides of their eyes,
and hair like cattails whispering in the dark.

with my stomach churning,
i entered the tall, dimly lit tepee.
the medicine man sat churning the ashes
in an empty fire-pit,
and women stood around me scattering
flower petals like
soft skin
all over the red-dirt earth.

his eyes twinkled,
and told me things that he would only let the
dusk unfold.
i took my seat on a white sheep-skin,
settling myself.

as the night grew older,
the fire grew larger,
shapes elongated on the fair skin of the stretched
tepee,
the flames dancing wildly,
smoke drifting up into the
starry dark.

the fire keeper stoked the raging
yellow and orange tongues,
and the medicine man sat with a bandanna on,
his waterfall nose moving,
and his leather brown skin creaking,
as he told us stories of the sacred medicine.

and we sat,
somebody started singing.
my mothers warm frame was close to mine,
and my step-father next to her,
shoulders touching in the close proximity,
intimate, smoky air.

they beat the deer-skin drum,
badum badum *** badum badum ***
in native languages like
roaring rivers,
they sang songs to the medicine,
for the opening of the heart;
their swift and strong voices
rising like smoke and flame.

when the drum was passed to me,
i didn't know any songs,
wasn't aware that i had to know any.
i started to hit the drum with the padded
stick, and
closed my eyes,
feeling the sticky sweat of my perspiring forehead
drip down upon my licked lips,
tasting of wood and dirt.
i sang something lilting
sounds coming from the deepest
crevices of my throat,
being gently pulled from the grasp of my ribs.

the medicine man put pine on the fire,
it sizzled and breath was filled with
sweet and sharp.

when the air was right, and
the night was thick with song,
he uncovered baskets of small,
green and ridged fruit-like shapes.
"buttons,"

the medicine was taking her form, and was cradled
as a native man took it around the circle,
along with oranges.
i'd find out soon why.

i took two, small and light in my fingers.
i closed my eyes and took the first bite.

my mouth was struck, eroding teeth
and erupting tongue
my face contorted from the bitter juices the small fruit
held within its delicate skin,
my stomach churned and i swallowed it down
biting into the orange, skin and all
begging for a shock of zest to take
down the intense flesh of the medicine.

i looked around,
some people were on their third, fourth.
the beat of the drums was constant,
along with the quiet,
restful crackle of the sighing fire.

the second bite was less of a surprise,
and i finished my first one.

it was only at the third bite of the second button
that my stomach refused to go any more without
heaving,
the astringent juices of the
small fruit working its magic on my stomach.

i closed my eyes and embraced what was around me;
slowly swaying in the deep voices of my
family,
mi familia,
'ohana,
and the heartbeat of the
mountain drums.

soon, i felt weary.
my mother rested her hand like falling rain on my shoulder,
and i lay in the warm arms of her
shawls,
twisting around me like snakes.

a traditional rollie was passed around,
made of corn husk and hand grown tobacco.
my eyes grew slow and drooping,
and i fell into the waiting arms of sleep
while listening to the music of
tobacco and wood smoke, hushed voices,
wilting night,
dancing fire, and alive laughter.

my sleep was deep and dreamless,
my body carried to other places by the medicine,
leaving my mind behind.

i woke to rough feet on the red dirt,
and my mother and father intertwined like red roses,
sleeping below the tepee's watch,
my mothers white skirt fanning out like
soft sheets in the summer
walls.

there were goodmorning smiles,
light spreading from one set of a skin to another,
as my family embraced me,
told me they were proud and grateful to me
for sitting with them.

a bowl of chocolate was passed around, along with a crate
of juicy, pink, dawn touched strawberries.
i dipped them in the dark, sweet and rich paste
and one after another,
felt myself expand into the universe even more.
only when my mother awoke,
to sprinkling flowers,
and lifted sky,
she told me that the chocolate held the medicine too.

i made my way across swaying, long grass,
and sat in the sun, sipping tea with a sliced lemon,
making art with twists and curls of my pencils and pens,
listening to the experiences of last night,
the enlightenment,
the sense of overwhelming love,
that was not quite drowning.

i basked in everything,
let the heat soak into my flesh,
the lilting laugh.
somebody handed me a guitar,
and i sang with my chocolate tinted lips,
and let my voice float within and around the mountain,
filling the tepee and the empty fire pit
once more,
with the sweet and bitter tastes of
the medicine
*peyote.

I sit inside my podunk room,
As a million meteors make mad dashes
For different conners of The Universe
Like galactic kids stuck in a game of
Sharks and Minnows.
They snap their space caps over their heads,
Adjust their goggles, and dive into the galaxy;
With the refreshing burn of
Firery friction against their faces
As they glide through the galaxy.

Above my head these nova swimmers soar,
As I pull a folded list from a desk drawer
And lean out the window with a quilt
To stop the chill from getting to me.
I close my eyes and let the cold moon light
Reflect off my surface and pale my skin.
The moon has no purpose but to moon bathe  with, of course.
Of the meteors that circle the sky
I have a very different purpose for.

One by one I recite wishes,
One special I had saved just for this night;
Scribbled in marker with fast hands belonging to a busy brain,
Elegant cursive dawned by a deary mind,
My best script for my friendly letters.
Some I whisper, some I shout,
Some I struggle just to get out.
But one by one these wishes are told
To the night sky, the meteors swimming pool.

Suddenly the windowsill creaks and cracks
My eyes snap open, the timber of my home breaks
And my house, my yard, the trees and the leaves
All disappear, and suddenly,
I am splashing and slushing  in a puddle of
Endless Blue Water until I
get the sense about me to swim.

I swim until the water reaches my head,
My eyes, my nose, my chin,
Drains from my ears
Splatters on my shoulders.
I walk when I can, through
A tunnel of cattails, seaweed, and pond things,
Like a swamp without a sky,
That make the Endless Blue Water a canal with
A wooden door that I reach
After many steps.

Knocking twice, I stand patient
Busy with the thought of what brought me here.
A slot in the door slides open,
Old eyes framed by glasses peer back at me.
"Go away!" The old man barks,
"I can't let you in. All of
The water will get everywhere on my feet."
I stand, my eyes pleading with angst,
Eyelashes that drip water.
"No, it's ok Grandpa. Let her in,
She is tired." A voice, gentle and sweet, speaks
With a melody of a thousand guitars
Tuned to the exact preference of my own ears.

With a grumble and groan.
A click and a clack,
The slot slides shut harshly
And with a creak and force,
The floor flies open and
I am urged by the Sweet Voice to
"Hurry Great Darling! Hurry!"
And I squeezed through
The door, but so does the
Viscous water.

It flows rapidly past the door jam,
And the owner of the Sweet Voice scrambles
To convice the hinges that they
Want to turn the other way.
The dusty ground I now stand on
Quickly turns to mud, as the water flows.
We cannot stop the water from flowing.

The water makes a will of its own,
Rises with vigorous ebb,
And carries Sweet Voice's Grandfather with it
Into the dust bowl in which it surges so fiercely to.
I go with it, emerged once again as I
Grasp for a wrist, an ankle,
A collar, until I find a strap
Of a suspender, and hold fast to the door handle,
As Sweet Voice whispers hopes
That the water will stop. He grits his teeth, and
I'll never forget what he said:

"You are magnificent, Great Darling.
I would have loved you endlessly."

And with that, the water reversed,
Taking the sweet voice back into
The Tunnel of Pond Things,
And slamming the door shut.

The Grandfather and I, sat on grassy moss
That once was barren dirt, that climbed into fingernails
And settled homes between human and calcium.
The Endless Blue Waters  had cleansed the dirt from before,
But had also taken my lovely paramour.

And with this, I wailed great echoes
That shook the ground, because
The sweet voice was the wish
Whispered so delicately but so
Anxiously on my windowsill
That lonely night.

After my fit, I turned to see
Great followers of the Barren Lands,
Ghastly beasts with spots and rabbit ears,
Humans with skin clear, great dragons
That inspired no fear, that
All stood before the Grandfather and I.
They held their hands before their faces,
Checked their teeth, and found it free of the dust
And dirt that haunted their days.

A great feast was arranged,
A thousand chairs at seven hundred tables,
All lined with a feast
Of cooked carrots and sweet potatoes,
Texas toast and orange marmalade,
Corn beef and root beer;
As kites with tails and laughter with squeals
Floated through with wind and smoke
Of campfires yellow, all
To celebrate the arrival of me,
The Great Darling,
Who had cleansed the Barren Lands
And brought about the begining of
The Hallow Lands.

I sat alone at this great feast,
Weary of my loss, when I felt
A tapping on my shoulder. It was
The Sweet Voice who had returned.  
I asked, elated by his arrival, about the
Means of his return, and he replied:

"The moon has more purpose than you
Assumed, Great Darling.
The moon controls all tides, and
With its power on my side, I asked it to
Take me back to you, and kindly it did, as
the moon understands that poles and magnetism
Are not the only forces than bring great things together;
That love can do that great deed too."

We sat under the lemon tree,  
My quilt, retrieved on Sweet Voice's journey,
Spread beneath us, as we watched the moon
Circle the sky for many nights,
Until we decided to join in its company.
One by two, we stepped up stepping stones
On a hill that reached the meteors pool,
Where my paramour and I lived
In galactic happiness forever more.

It's hard to forget you
And not just because I remember the way you made me feel (happy)
But because I remember everything
about you.
I remember the way you pulled me up into your treehouse and showed me your childhood, littered with cigarettes and beer bottles.
And the way your hands shook when you would touch me;
As if they were bottles of spray paint and my body was a blank wall.
I remember the way you would ramble on about nothing
Because you were afraid I'd get bored in the silence.
Yet talking with you was effortless; like how you once started a bonfire with gasoline: instant.
I remember the way your eyes always told different stories than your mouth
And how they looked when we sat by the river playing with cattails.
I remember the energy I felt when you made me break a window in the abandoned house
And the nostalgic sadness I felt when I broke the empty bottle of liquor in the same room
Alone.
Because I can't forget the nothingness in your eyes when you ended things
Or your steady hands that I was no longer allowed to reach out for.
I can't forget how you uncharacteristically said so little,
Dousing the flame I was trying so hard to keep alive.
Or how you so easily walked away
as though everything I ever remembered about you
Was really someone else.
I can't forget how you crushed my heart in between your hands until it turned to dust.
And now all I can do is spend my days writing your name in the ashes in cursive

Melting snow creates a stream
running down the mountainside
like a vivid night of dreams
ending in the foaming tide

Valley lake full of trout
top of water, insects float
on the edges cattails sprout
not sufficiently deep  for a boat

Cold clear water in I wade
casting my fly to the shore
I spy motion in the shade
stripping back cast once more

The fly hits the cattails base
a swirl and a flash below
moving fly, trout gives chase
incoming, stripping slow

Trout is caught and in my creel
wade back to the lakes edge
in the truck behind the wheel
driving home on mountains edge

Fowl floating and flapping across an ocean canopy.

Lightly squawking and ascending in a calm summer sky.

Waves shine and melt into the beachfront in a dull roar slowly thundering in diagonal collapsing sectors.

The top of the ocean. The point of a sphere. Its water that falls slowly to the bottom of..... Here!

Ripples and puddles and drinks full of life, the clearest the murky and bluest in light.
Mountains and palisades can be rocks that reach skyward. God on a gravel road walking through.
The golden purple cattails glow in the sunlight like strawberry fields that fizzle on my hands in the wind that can dance. The vinyl green stem leafs sit stagnantly silently awaiting the moon.

Hoppers crescendo in a frozen moment singing in stillness that refuses to relent.
The trees around them bask in the energetic massage from the moving sections of recently called air vapors.

The Hi- C haircuts that nature reminds me it inspired bobble from the vectors.  

This climate ecology scenery breeds the moments religions were made for me.

Lily, you grow delicately like the dreams in your undefiled mind,
internally defiant of your ambition to the people; kind, and graceful;
Loving all; Ivies and cattails envy you when you bloom lonely on single:
Lilypads, refusing to accept anything that you deserve. You must realize,
in time you deserve to be called by something so beautiful, and stop,
answering to everything but your full –
Name.

my eyes opened to find
the thin lizard dawn gleaming
after the gutter drank its' fill
of the moon last night
the tambourine
buried in my lungs still
vibrating like these walls
papered with cheap roses

last night i found comfort the
only way i know how
in situations like this
beside a girl wearing
a pretty ribbon
twisted around her waist
pomegranate lipstick
wet clay & tragic glitter
smeared across her eyelids

we spent the night
roped together by
half-removed clothing
& my fingers third
knuckle deep
counting the pulse
of the heart
of the universe

while the wild fox
barked on the hill outside
& the mockingbirds
played riffs in the lilac bushes
her ******* ran tight
around her shins &
she sputtered the dark
lyricism of bees
twisting her tongue
backwards around
itself in my ear

our bare bellies
slapped together as
my tongue found her
tooth enamel &
the trees formed
a tight center loop to
harness the sky
for us & i
held my breath
waiting for her
to breathe first

i can feel her chest
& plump **** now
quietly throbbing
against the tight young
flesh of my back but when
i roll over & see her
eyes darting
green like a thin
ocean laser avoiding
my dynamic gaze &
her pouty mouth emitting
a pink yawn i can tell
she's unhappy & ashamed
of me

i tried to run
my fingers through
the butterscotch tumbleweed
of her hair but she just
popped her gum
& sent me
high stepping through
the soft warm mud
& chest high cattails
of her driveway
callow under the clouds
stuck like gnats to
the fly paper sky

I was older than you called me by my freckles when we met, barely
stretched over the cattails lazily in sweet winds imperceptible usually through
the hot water air
at a parboil

your cigarette-and-sunscreen, cigarette-and-sunshine smell and feel I have you
now as I walk eyes closed down the autumn street
no all smokes do not smell the same, I miss you—

the world in your departure is static for the most
ironic twist of you thought, you thought that I was beautiful
I wasn’t, not while you were watching, not till you
were farther
till I was older, barely

oh if all smokes were you still
if all the suns were you
if I weren’t beautiful and you were looking
oh

A man in a flower shop… What a sight! He doesn’t know what to do, how to pick, where to look. Too many colors! Too many choices! I’m not sure what she likes…
What a weakness it is, to be a man next to flowers… Something so fragile and so beautiful, it makes him look stagnant in a world of much flow.
Then, in walks F. Scott… What are you?! You look mighty fine by this Rose. Do the thorns disrupt you? Do the petals leave you longing?
I thought you had a thing for Kichijoten-- in her Temple; next to the Sakura blossoms of Japan…
My, my. You can’t be part of the Lost Generation; I think you’ve found your place! As I look for mine by the Cattails and fresh Dahlias…
Have you seen these bunches of Baby’s Breath?? Sincerity only costs $3.95; it’s much more expensive nowadays… They don’t even play Jazz music here… What are you doing here, Fitzgerald? I know you aren’t here for the Hyacinths…
Has someone slain your heart again? My heart was slain many times, but everything happens for a reason, right Francis??
I know you have a thing for Gold, come check out these Daisies…and brighten your day. Don’t fret. Don’t fear. Loosen your heart and let it be free. I’m here. And everything is okay.
The Daisies? Really? Awful choice… I was only kidding about those.

Pollywogs and dragonflies
Salamander slime
Some are dreamt and summer schemes.

Mud Daubers on the cattails
Catfish on the hook
Crawl daddy in the cranny.

Crickets with backward knees
Buzzing honey bees
Poets of a summer dream.

Martin Hunter

we used to never hold hands like that,
with mine on top and yours on the bottom,
i was too small
you were towering like some office building calculations running through your mind,
yet art on the tips of your fingertips,
and I was short like the stack of books by my bed,
and it was like a mix of night and day when my hair spilled down your golden skin,
golden hair,
tousled blonde like some kind of lion lying on the bed,
veiled in a dark slumber.
you stroked my skin and it sent shivers down my back,
and kissing you was like lying in summer sun,
pleasant,
and you’re so different from what I have now,
because now I have fall kisses,
on a bed of crimson leaves,
with another blonde haired boy but this time he’s a wolf,
and this time he holds me while we are skin on skin in a forest of cattails underfoot,
the stubbed filter of a cigarette to my left,
our clothing to my right.
he’s full of fire,
it’s all over him, on his skin, branded across his face,
but I don’t love him,
i just like the way he says he loves me when he’s looking at me like sunlight filtering through leaves,
with his crystalline blues,
biting my lips with passionate ferocity

poets often write about running
     carefree
     through prairies
as if it is romantic.

they don’t know the itch
     the ***** of thick grass
     the **** of goldenrod
     the sting of thistle.
they haven’t hoisted one moist rubber-clad leg
     waist-high
over the other
again and
again and
again
waterproof yet sweating
     just to move ten feet.
they haven’t picked seeds from sticky skin
as the fields give way to marsh
     grass to cattails
     reeds to rushes.
they haven’t bobbed
and balanced
     up and
     down and
     up
on floating mats
of dead, sewn stalks
     walking on water
     a minefield of bog slime.

i haven’t stopped watching my steps
since i got that job
and i think i’m due for a misstep.
i’m looking to stop scratching
to stop picking
to stop bobbing.
i’m looking for a darling weak spot
     strong enough to swallow me
in this swamp.
i would bushwhack to her
     through the pricking
     the prodding
     and the stinging
put the wrong foot forward
plunge through the mat
and let her pour over the tops of my waders
and sink me
     deeper and
     deeper and
too deep.
i would drown in her.

I stopped as I went
past RDU International.

I killed the engine
next to a sky plastered
to a lake.

With a thousand wilting
banana trees
in the back,
and a needle jumping
in the red,
I came to a stop.

Planes scoured the sky with their screeching,
soured the lake
with their contrails,
the geese watching from the middle of the lake
in flotillas
idling in the heat
because it was too hot to move.

If I didn't get these bananas back to the nursery,
they'd die.

Taking out a gallon jug,
I walked to the shoreline
and reached in between reeds,
and cattails and contrails
and cirrus in globs of clay
to lift the water to the radiator.

As I poured the water
into the radiator,
I knew that humanity
is neither the geese, the truck,
or the airplane,
humanity is the needle.