"cottonwood" poems
dust cloud heavy
in an apricot sky
cottonwood mucker
under ambrose pale
whippet and shepherd
mill at the earth patch
yellow birch hangs
over red bench park
combine shavings
in crack rust brown
scissors chips fall
at the back stop
whiskey jack looters
sing patented chords
siblings (and 2 wheel enthusiasts!)
give thanks
joyous retrievers
master the criss cross
bare maples stand
at settlers way
barred owl and blue jay
whistle in the fore-wind
ghosts
and goblins
pull on the seeds
wind gusts belt
over the west gulch
a blood rush churns
in the chilling fall morn
hallowed grounds still
at the midday
quiet reflections
of the afghan
and hound
jumpers unite
at the oxbow
route runners bend
(on a sultry foray!)
meadows exposed
in the framework
ball parks empty
with pennants past
barrel dirt favors
the brew house
crimson and copper
find bracken ridge gate
harvest hands savor
the honey and hops
blankets of color
for a winter's hatch
brush fire kept
under steady peruse
bark bites fly
and embers glow
pine cones drop
from the timber tops
3 wick candles
grace the dinner place
shiver and ******
at the piper's call
cob web dew
on the shadowy gates
a chilled mist mellows
the season's return ~
poets and artists
and dreamers awake
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 11:55 PM UTC
The cottonwood fell from the skies and covered the grass
Like snow
It smelled fresh and young, like summer
Like you
Like the winter that barely lasted, the snow melted too soon
You were gone too soon
I'll never forget the night I heard.
That
Was the night
It snowed.
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 12:40 AM UTC
It's funny:
Until now I couldn't imagine dependency on substances.
I didn't know how to imagine addiction.
Couldn't imagine a Routine in Smoke
But for the first time I got just to the edge--
went only a bit beyond.
And then I forgot.
I forgot to worry
my head like a puff of cottonwood
I didn't even have a backburner on
Simmering the responsibility
the inability
the fragility
of my self.
When I woke up it was back.
I had worry rushing to fill my head because it had
to make up for Lost Time.
and i wish i never had to stop Losing Time.
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 1:35 AM UTC
Unexpected rain falls softly
on the arid ground I walk
glistening in the shadows
of the twisted weedy stalk.
Clouds drifted like a shroud
somber, gray and creeping
like wandering ghosts in fog
silent - wispy - weeping.
The coolness of the morning
embraced my face with pleasure
it kissed my cheek and brow
like a momentary treasure.
How sweet the breath of life
in 45 minutes of walking
no traffic and no noise at all
nothing marred by talking.
Unexpected rain fell softly
tickled my nose round every bend
as I left the trail of cottonwood trees
and finished at its end.
Nov 23, 2021
Nov 23, 2021 at 10:45 PM UTC
*Do you hear the music?
Does it give you ease?
Hold my hands and lean far back
Look up into the trees.
The answers there
That no one sees,
Imaginings to anyone who believes.
That magic
Can’t be deceived,
Open arms to be relieved.
Move with me
And be believed,
Cherished, loved
And well received.
Just dancing with the trees.
Sunlight flickering through a canopy of incandescent leaves
A gentle cool wind blowing to a background of confident blue.
All around me are the dancing trees.
Rejoicing it seems in their bright prancing hues.
Oak, hemlock, cottonwood, spruce and pine
All swaying together in perfect time.
I walk the path in awe of it all
Listening to the spreading news.
The earth it seems
Has reached the dawning of a new day
Reproducing itself along the way.
I wonder if that’s really true
A year – can it be just a day?
If it is then I’m a part and so are you.
As we pass through this earthly delight
Another day of romance is on the way.
All the trees are out dancing tonight
Having put on their Sunday best.
Tonight they too can find this life's zest.
(Now move your body with the rhythm of the wind blown trees)
Let’s dance with them just for a little while.
Listen to the music of the air.
You move right – I’ll follow with a smile.
Then move left – the movement in your hair.
Living life with but one care
Taking this time to be aware.
Open your heart – no fear to share
Should or shouldn’t we dare?
This wonderful evening we are there.
Move again, I’ll take your hand
To and fro we say – isn’t it grand?
Waltzing – can you feel the breeze
In with a troop of trees?
I bow straight to my knees,
You follow and begin to see
Life and love and harmony
Peace of mind be seized.
Now holding on tight – still on your knees
Still moving to and fro I ask you please
Do you hear the music – does it give you ease?
Hold my hands and lean far back
And look up into the trees.
The answers there that no one sees
Imaginings to anyone who believes
That magic can’t be deceived
Open arms to be relieved
Move with me and be believed,
Cherished, loved and well received
Just dancing with the trees.*
Jun 3, 2017
Jun 3, 2017 at 4:14 AM UTC
Ten black crows
in a red-budded
cottonwood tree
basking in the eerie
glow of the waning sun
bruised, livid sky
weighted air
waves shush, shush
on the receding tide
serenity reigns
but I can feel it
hovering offshore
a curled fist
wound tight
ready to strike
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 5:43 PM UTC
canyon wren
sings her sweet song
perched upon
the piñon-
for my love
who lies beneath-
the cottonwood
twee twee twee
tsheeeeee.
:)
r ~ 10/3/14
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 5:46 AM UTC
With a flutter of joy
comes a deep red on her cheeks,
neck and collarbones follow suit.
Our creek and the sky
and the earth
and the birds
give us all the
answers so let us find
other uses for our tongues.
Together in this
quiet and safe
garden we have created,
we will share our secrets
with the flowers
and listen to the stories
of earthworms.
We will give
the soil
small tastes of ourselves
under Luna's smile.
Let us drink deep
from this water
cold and clear
and become one
under the mighty
Cottonwood trees.
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 3:18 PM UTC
Cottonwood falling,
A snow in July,
Filling the air with fluffy flakes
And covering the world with
White fuzziness.
We're riding,
Just as fast as we can,
Racing,
Stirring up the drifts
While the wind blows the avalanche closer.
I feel warm,
Being so close to you and the sun.
A warm snow--
Don't you think that's ironic?
I love the snow,
I love your heat.
My heart is going as fast as we are,
Fifty, Sixty, Seventy miles an hour.
I embrace you closer,
This thrill of a panicking soul,
It's magic.
Keep me in this illusion of a
Peaceful time.
Lift me sky high,
Let me fall in warmth like this
Snow in July.
I feel so free,
So young and bright eyed,
A naive star
In a Hollywood movie.
Let's get out of this small town,
Let's make new memories together.
I want to see the world,
I want to see the highlight,
With our song,
The one where we sing along.
Tonight,
Our love is a song,
A soundtrack to
A snow in July.
We can see the world
Together.
No need for others to ruin our
Loving silence.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 7:55 PM UTC
Paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia,
Scarlet Chinese talker of summer.
Two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in Paula's
hair,
And fluff of white from a cottonwood.
2.1k
(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
or five books in one year,
to be the painter and the thing painted,
... where are we, bo?
Wait-get his number.
The barber shop handling is here
and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist,
and the flame orange scarf.
Yet there is more-he sleeps under bridges
with lonely crazy men; he sits in country
jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children
of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has
cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's
father; he pencils wrists of lonely women.
Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago
and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa
and feel the tall grass coming up in June
and the ache of the cottonwood trees
singing with the prairie wind?
2.1k
these foothills
rolling in pine and
grassland meadows,
where silvery lupine
follow the melting snow,
hint of the mountains to come
in spiny crags that
catch a cumulus pocked sky
cottonwood tufts rain
this day after solstice
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
Here is Cedar Draw, a stream which
spills free from the dam upstream
and then slowly licks its way westerly
among the billowing cottonwood
and volcanic boulders that still appear red-hot,
flattening out, pooling here and there
where fat trout and perch can feed
on luckless grasshoppers and mayflies
blown into the water by the wind.
Here is Cedar Draw, widening into
lush shallows with bulrush and cat-tails
clicking in the wind, showy red-winged
blackbirds clinging to stalks high above
the waterline, and where snowy egrets
ply the mossy banks for frogs. The
only sound heard is the chittering of
birds and that warm summer breeze
softly moaning and sighing for you alone.
Here is Cedar Draw, as fine a place
a poet could every hope to find to relax,
meditate, sip a little port wine, tease the
iridescent-blue damselflies that abound
here, cool one's feet at water's edge,
scribble in a notebook disjointed thoughts
that may or may not make it into a poem,
perhaps to doze a little and finally to
rouse up and thank your muse for such
a great day and such a splendid spot.
--
Sep 18, 2011
Sep 18, 2011 at 11:27 AM UTC
You can’t really picture the place.
You don’t recall who was there.
But you remember surprise
That human ashes are not powdery dust,
Apt to disintegrate like snow,
Or soft like bread cast upon the waters.
Dad’s ashes chafed your palms like jagged seeds
As you clutched fistfuls from a plastic purple box
And flung them down a hillside
Somewhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
And you remember the feeling of urgency
As you retreated up the hill.
You had motions to go through,
Space to occupy,
A black and white landscape to walk
Among small figures filing along a dirt track
In the airless September heat.
Jul 25, 2015
Jul 25, 2015 at 6:54 AM UTC
1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back, everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.
2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.
3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.
4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
Tin cup
Simple pleasure common treasure it has its worth by it connection not everyone but many found this by an
On old pump by itself or next to a bucket you could drink or use it to prime the pump it lends itself to
Western lore found around the chuck wagon on a cattle drive one of the men on the trail drive squats
Before the fire with gnarled hands he holds the cup with hands that are callused from handling his lariat
Day in and day out on the cattle now he holds it filled with coffee strong river coffee drawn from the
Brazos shaded by mesquite cottonwood and juniper finest example of Texas this old cup ties you into
time and place a past that is loved and loved ones that shared campsites that now have passed on in the
Heat of the summer day you drank hardly from its contents it banged around in all kinds of
Circumstances invariably most of them pleasurable ones and who handled the cup mother or a favorite
Grandmother you see her hands lovingly holding the cup they go together like flowers and rain you strain
To hold the thought you don’t want to let go of that special connected memory or maybe they used it to
Measure flour by closing your eyes you can almost smell the bread or biscuits the flour produced it takes
You across many thresholds that are steeped in precious memories that can never be again you are
Taken back to childhood by something so simple but so useful it creates a lost time of joy and
Happiness long remembered and never to be forgotten a symbol or a symbolic trusted identification
With place or person you feel its coolness in your hand you move it around for a few quick moments
You return to yesterday not bad for a piece of tin they give so much credit to other metals for other
Reasons of course the value they possess and what you could exchange them for but that is talking
About a certain amount were dealing with priceless things of the heart that no amount of money can
Buy just think next time there are many items that are in themselves of little value but they are
Touchstones a gateway to a broken past riches that aren’t for sale or they are not to be bartered away
They are never put in a safe but they so readily take you to a safe place tender joy is felt in the heart
A calling can be felt and heard jewels of inestimable value lay hidden they easily come into view when
You touch insignificance without expecting anything the world lets you know you are richer than you
know
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 7:25 PM UTC
it was a magical moment
cottonwood falling like snow
sunlight catching the edges
adding halo's glow
gentle floating angel feathers
drifting about from above
we sat enraptured, quiet
basking in simple pure love
moments come to us like that
blink an eye, then they're gone
yet lasting forever, eternity
forever that moment lives on
all of time, of human existence
condenses into that single space
treasure the gift we've been given
experience a moment of grace
May 24, 2012
May 24, 2012 at 11:57 PM UTC
Rain on tin
the pang and elasticity of
time and the time it
takes nature to sway
from right to left
from outer to inner
to notice the girl
on the edge of the room
with a drink in her hand
and then there's that
old lightning, self-proclaiming
its importance to the
gymnasium with grumbling
thunder then we're all
tossing dice and teaching
each other dance moves,
saying the girl on the edge
needs a pair of new shoes
and someone responds:
Isn't that the woman who kills?
And I go home with her
rain on tin and a summer
wade through Cottonwood Creek
we're in a shed
and it's musty, dangerous,
and possible
a killer takes certain care
of your body with her
cautious hands.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 9:45 PM UTC
Down from the icy Sawtooth crags
and through the winter-laden landscape,
the wind eventually dips to the canyon
and creek we loved so well as children.
Continuing on, it threads through the
hollows above the creek, sculpted even
today by stooped cottonwood trees.
Twisting above granite outcroppings
and lava boulders, the wind courses
through the giant arteries of this canyon,
passing among quaking aspen, river willow,
and gnarled cottonwood, shorn rudely
by now of every dryly-veined leaf.
At ancient volcanic escarpments the
wind bears south, scraping hard along
canyon walls. Upward it moves, out of
the canyon, slowing and sallying about
the hillocks, the gullies, the poplars
until it finally comes to stir ever more
gently, warmer even, my dear brother,
around your gray marbled headstone.
Primeval of days, this very same wind
blows for eternity upon eternity, polishing
and purifying even the roughest of
the earth's elements and impediments.
This said, at this hill's crest where you rest,
there is no need of further refinement. Feel
how the northern wind quiets for you,
as if it knows over whose stone it passes.
--
Sep 11, 2011
Sep 11, 2011 at 4:52 PM UTC
*Little black fruit swaying in the hot summer sun
such succulent skin shriving, baking beneath the crisp, green leaves
what strange fruit hangs from the cottonwood tree?
What sour fruit falls to the earth and makes a thud?
whose blood soaked flesh leaks into the underbelly of the earth
whose body lays motionless....
whose once sweet flesh now sways in the autumn breeze
what strange fruit hangs from the cottonwood tree?....*
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 2:12 PM UTC
Cottonwood flurries gently lilt
like the impending summer's dandelion wishes,
before lightly descending wistfully
under the weightiness
of the morning coastal mist
The nearness of the blanketing stillness
is now so much closer than the sky
I can see clearly now
where all my shadows once dwelled
So nigh, this echoing silence at hand,
it firmly grasps a weighing loneliness
left drowning in the waning grandeur
of fading dreams
The poignant pang
of the dawning of the day;
nature’s soul stirring
silent manipulation
A conscious moment,
always rousing the potential
to evolve into a beautiful thing
. © April 2016
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 6:17 PM UTC
I watch the cottonwood
seeds
gather on the
wildflowers and
the weeds.
The trail looks a gentle
snowfall
of dust,
Like the back corner
of grandmother's attic...
Blanketed in mystery
and
well worn with
the years.
White sand and flakes of
pyrite
glitter on the
water's edge,
Dancing
with the rythym of the
waves...
A hummingbird
chases a dragonfly
into a tangerine sunset.
A hawk circles the road looking
for a wayward mouse.
I cry a silent prayer.
And can
only
think of you,
My Angel.
And
the
wind
cries
too...
Singing her
sorrowful song
Only for you,
My Angel,
Only for you...
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 11:16 PM UTC
The effortless leaf fluttered in the wind, its premature disconnection being the cause of sadness for the caterpillar.
The shadow of the old cottonwood had lengthened, and its roots tunneled ceaselessly in the obscured grass.
A bird summoned forth the air, and filtered her back out, having her carry the daily song.
The dog’s ear lifted slightly as the whir of a bike chain became audible for a short time.
Sleep rediscovered him swiftly.
The field slowly absorbed the flooded acequia water.
Ducks discovered a temporary haven.
She sat in the shade, the dog panting by her side. The soft light caressed her exposed skin in the loose summer dress. She squinted up at the blur of a bicyclist, smiling.
The earth swiveled slightly. The leaf had found the ground. The caterpillar had long been pecked by a cheery, singing bird. The shadow of the tree, now extending in the acequia grove, faded with the dying light. The dog now slept inside the old house, abandoning his domain at the fence corner. The ducks found new water, as the field sighed with relief. She walked her dog back to her yard, wishing the bicycle had not been moving quite so fast.
Oct 11, 2011
Oct 11, 2011 at 10:13 PM UTC
Tuesday is a 'Whisper shower' away
A night without fearsome lightning nor blustery winds
The entrancing song of tickled chimes from front porch swings
Harmonious pitter -patter of evening rains
The steady trickle of copper , gutter drains
Sweet , melodic call of Barn Owls o'er darkened fields
Gentle drops of healing water from Cottonwood , Magnolia and Crape Myrtle trees , splendiferous offerings courtesy of cumulonimbus progeny , eventide hail of Spring Killdeer , Mockingbird and Whippoorwill harmony
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 11:10 PM UTC