"coltsfoot" poems
The bright blue bottle hit me like a hint of death
on the breath of Spring.
I imagined it being tossed out a truck window
by underage teens fancying themselves clever
and mature and immortal
as if the earth had willed upon them
that her stolen treasure, Aluminum,
be returned or she’d cause their truck keys
disappear for all eternity.
I picked up the blue bottle
tried to feel resurrection
in a recycling sort of way
felt instead only the hollow emptiness
of mindless eternal reincarnation.
Winter had been long this year and lately
I fantasized resurrection more than usual
at a field where I stopped to listen to meadowlark and field sparrow calling for mates or alerting everyone to the sin of the blue bottle.
Several deer grazed the unseen first greens of Spring near skunk cabbage and coltsfoot.
At a small stream, I cupped my hand into the icy fast water and raised it to my lips, then splashed my face, then splashed some more, more,
then knelt, both knees at the streambed and submersed my face and head,
in self-inflicted baptism
for my own blue bottle sins,
opened my eyes, exhaled all my blue bubbles, for the longest of repentant moments,
pulled out of the water
gasping the holy Spring air
for dear life
and thereafter walked each step
in the garden of resurrection.
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 28, 2018 at 9:25 PM UTC
Green is the sky and all the lights of heaven
Are peeking eyes, up to us in given blossoms
Of the flowering clover and bright are new daisies,
Wee sparks of fire who squad, roams of butterflies
And bees on bouncing airstruck mission waysides,
The shot stems of wildlings breech, lancing into sky.
I am the gardener with suns aborning in my eyes,
To pull the weeds wildly and declare all is garland,
I hear trumpet of bindweed, see hearts in the leafs
Of coltsfoot, crowns in the thistle, tapestries, vines
For dress of hair and eye and walls on cottage dry,
Are lovemakes true and keepsakes of joyous times.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
Late April and only
coltsfoot—Tussilago farfara—breaking leaf litter.
Our daffodils, peonies and crocuses
are also making signs.
April is the cruelest month, I forget why.
A sweet slow Spring
no sudden changes
each leg and leaf unfolds deliberately. You can't miss it.
New York City's spring rushes like a yellow cab
into summer. One day leaves are wet,
next they’re leather. I prefer this slow dance,
birds mating on the sky, peepers evolving into frogs.
Repairs take weeks or months. Septic,
garage door, cracked windshield, clean windows,
build bridge, buy land, rake leaves off erosion control,
cut wood, prune lilac, paint lawn chairs.
More carefully inspect, identify, the insect
of the week, a fly with an ant’s body
that skirts the grass and falls in drinks.
Look more closely! It will be gone in a few days!
Then it will be the time of moths or fireflies,
mosquitoes and wasps. Mud road,
red-winged blackbird. The slashing stream
topples old trees. My legs hurt.
May 23, 2022
May 23, 2022 at 6:17 AM UTC
Nicky, the neighbor’s dog, drags a road **** home.
A beautiful pelt like those fox shoulder garments women wore in the
forties.
But the head is crushed beyond recognition—maybe it’s a fox and that’s
why Nicky, a canine, is conducting this wake on our front lawn.
Loretta, my wife’s mother, is in the hospital again. Forty years of Crohn’s
disease has finally broken her.
It may take some time but she won’t bounce back from this episode.
None of us are sorry to see her die, not even Loretta. There will be a
thunderous downpour during her last hour.
I like the story about the nuns hitting Peg in school–contumacy is a sin.
Emile and Loretta considered it an inappropriate punishment for their
cherished adopted daughter.
So they pulled her out of Catholic for public school. They did their own
thinking about discipline.
Early Spring, peepers all night, then the birds take over at dawn.
Soothing—the mourning doves.
During this half of the year, May through October, we live in a green
bower.
We turn the house inside out, move into the mountains.
In their annual order, flowers appear in the understory: coltsfoot, hepatica
and trillium through to the end, late purple aster, spotted joe pye and
pearly everlasting.
We let Nicky nurse her road **** watch over it, roll around on it.
Don’t let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in the passing lane.
Jan 16, 2024
Jan 16, 2024 at 7:35 AM UTC
Your love like coltsfoot
is fraying at its edges
with golden intent.
Mar 22, 2018
Mar 22, 2018 at 10:49 PM UTC
The old tale wandered cross the Fearnóg moss green
The faint songs of the ancient’s druids sing
Woven spells round the faeries rings
Brian Boruma mac Cennetig might hold the throne
On golden scarred brow bore the crown of High King
Tuatha Dé Danann shimmering robed in white Bogbean
Gloved in moss sewn fine with buttercups
Coltsfoot garlands round their heads
Whitlow grass soft neath their feet
And heather pink droplets of drifting fog
Children shivered in anticipation round smoking peat fires
Awaiting long told stories of battle
Against the fierce black-haired Fir bolg
Rose the legend Hy-Brasil from the waves
Come the count of seven years
In the dreamland of the Irish
Tír na nÓg
This was written for my Family the Irish
All Rights Reserved @ Tammy M. Darby March 22, 2019.
All Material Stored in Author Base
Mar 23, 2019
Mar 23, 2019 at 12:32 AM UTC
Today I heard
The all too rare sound of silence
When I took my boots and woollen socks
And with them my feet and legs
And the rest,
From the noisy pebbles
Up to the sea-soft grass that lies
Between stone and rock, and beyond that,
A sea,
That lapped today no stronger
Than a lake in summer.
It is not quite yet the time for silence,
As winter is loud, at least
To my ears.
But today there were
Catkins, on the willow
Coltsfoot flowers, which I had not seen
Before, and
I saw a plant I think looks
As if it might be related to chamomile.
I wore my long skirt,
My sisters scarf
And a green hat
I felt as lovely as the trees today,
Well maybe not quite…
But I will say so because
All is silent, but love in this moment,
And if I am not to love myself I am not to love the earth on which I stand.
Am I not the tree?
Am I not the bird?
Am I not the hoverfly?
Am I not the insect that I almost ate,
Upon plucking a gorse flower
So enticingly filled with a scent of coconut and sweet warm sunlight
I looked into the flower and found another being…
Gorse flowers do not taste as they smell
However often you try, thinking that maybe, this once, they will liken primroses, and taste like….
Flowers.
Maybe I am more like the grass.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 8:38 PM UTC
Your alluring face
figurant and immured,
yet all those things
that made you proud
Oolong tea,
laddered nylon tights
coltsfoot by the river
mattered more.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 2:15 PM UTC