"mosses" poems
Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.
Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.
Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.
Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal.
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.
Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumber'd streets;
Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.
Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.
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White-furred hill flowers bow
Gust-bent,
Wet in April snow,
Lavender beneath their
Downy coats.
Tender soldiers of spring
Grasp wind-blown gravel steeps,
Stand to beckon brown grass,
Soft-call the life in sapless trees
To ring with green again
Against Old Bully Winter’s
Blustering.
Quaking aspens,
Earliest to leaf in yellow-green,
Curling grama grasses,
Tough food for buffalo,
Cannot boast first life each Montana spring;
Only zombie-lichens,
Rock-fast mosses
Throw off winter’s death
Before the crocus' rise.
On eastern Montana hills
No street-hemmed dandelions
Colonize in chute-dropped ranks;
No time-tamed tulips
Live on wind-round knolls.
Here, the yucca’s bayonet-sharp ******
Here, the wild onions’ scent-strong hold;
But these arrive after early chill,
Following the purple crocus on the hill.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 8:36 AM UTC
41
I robbed the Woods—
The trusting Woods.
The unsuspecting Trees
Brought out their Burs and mosses
My fantasy to please.
I scanned their trinkets curious—I grasped—I bore away—
What will the solemn Hemlock—
What will the Oak tree say?
4.1k
all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work
startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world
of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman
the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide
during the long winter, have come to fling themselves
against the over-sized picture window in my living room,
songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime
so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out,
to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the
tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown
hydrangea, which captured autumn’s maple leaves, worn
like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay
and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the
brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row,
to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window,
a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched
by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies
exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed
hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed
out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing
and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against
the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into
the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade
for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden
i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill
and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks
and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning
May 18, 2012
May 18, 2012 at 8:56 AM UTC
I
Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?
II
I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'
I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall
Low adown, low adown,
From under my starry sea-bud crown
Low adown and around,
And I should look like a fountain of gold
Springing alone
With a shrill inner sound
Over the throne
In the midst of the hall;
Till that great sea-snake under the sea
From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps
Would slowly trail himself sevenfold
Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate
With his large calm eyes for the love of me.
And all the mermen under the sea
Would feel their immortality
Die in their hearts for the love of me.
III
But at night I would wander away, away,
I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks,
And lightly vault from the throne and play
With the mermen in and out of the rocks;
We would run to and fro, and hide and seek,
On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells,
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea.
But if any came near I would call and shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap
From the diamond-ledges that jut from the dells;
For I would not be kiss'd by all who would list
Of the bold merry mermen under the sea.
They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me,
In the purple twilights under the sea;
But the king of them all would carry me,
Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
In the branching jaspers under the sea.
Then all the dry-pied things that be
In the hueless mosses under the sea
Would curl round my silver feet silently,
All looking up for the love of me.
And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
All things that are forked, and horned, and soft
Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
All looking down for the love of me.
3.9k
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 10:41 PM UTC
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.
It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.
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Fingers
Picking ****** flowers
Dripping spice burgundy
Staining serenity
A touch of
Surreal simplicity
Undaunted movement of
Molecular fractals
Bursting in waves
Of fantastical light
Sensual trickles
Tongue
Licking sappy mosses
Amber and honey
Expanding swiftly
An odyssey through the
Gums and divisions
Between ivory teeth
Ecstasy aplenty
Flooding down through
The body
Leaving stains
Of serenity
Nostrils
Sniffing smoky cedar
Microscopic air ripples
Orchestra of tune and note
Tune and note
Whispers and cries
Kisses and sighs
Invisible in form and sight
These do travel
Through tunnels
Those give sense of smell
Droplets of spice burgundy
Toes
Sinking through layer
Under layer of moist clay
Descending in time shaken
Matter
Pores of the skin
Breathing air and soil
Replenishing vital veins
Rivers of beating blood
Unending
Molecular fractals
Fingers
Picking ****** flowers
Dripping spice burgundy
Staining serenity
A touch of
Surreal simplicity
Undaunted movement of
Molecular fractals
Bursting in waves
Of fantastical light
Sensual trickles
Sep 25, 2012
Sep 25, 2012 at 9:55 PM UTC
1441
These Fevered Days—to take them to the Forest
Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl—
And shade is all that devastates the stillness
Seems it sometimes this would be all—
3.1k
Mariana in the Moated Grange
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
3k
Bleached walls, and incandescent lights
The mind illustrates it’s own world
With dreams, desires and abstractions
What it wants, but can never have
Droned out vocalization, and exaggerated sighs
The mind fills in the gaps
With chatter, remarks and laughs
What it wants, but can never have
Concrete floors, and tiled ceilings
The mind creates it’s own scenery
With grasses, mosses and trees
What it wants, but can never have
Constant progression, and flooded walkways
The mind orchestrates it’s own utopia
With sunshine, breeze and cloudless skies
What it wants, but can never have
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 4:46 PM UTC
.
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 6:47 PM UTC
After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.
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I.
A louse in a house
or a mouse on a blouse.
A bell that goes ****
or a gong that goes ****
A gap on a map
or a cap on your lap.
A drink in the sink
or an ink that stinks.
A spleen on a screen
or a queen who is green.
A bow in the snow
or a crow that glows.
II.
A wash or a whip,
a lip or a lop,
a top or a tip,
a car or afar,
a bar or a war,
a door or a snore,
a bore or a nail,
a flail or a whale,
a run or a bun,
a sun or a moon,
a spoon or a bus,
a fuss or a sigh,
a cry or a cheer,
a fear or a smile,
a while or a pen,
a den or a cat,
a mat or a hat,
a bat or a glass,
a vase or a weight,
a mate or a fork,
a cork or a mop,
a cop or a stop.
III.
Apples and artichokes, ants and antelopes,
bees and beers, books and brains,
cucumbers and chimneys, ***** and coats,
dogs and drains, dots and dominoes,
ears and eejits, elephants and exams,
flies and flutes, files and friends,
grasses and guts, giants and gyms,
horrors and hiccups, horses and hills,
igloos and irons, irises and idiots,
jumpers and jackets, jodhpurs and jellies,
kings and kettles, kites and kittens,
lions and lamps, lemons and lunches,
mums and monsters, mosses and moths,
noses and notes, nightmares and needles,
oblongs and orang-utans, organs and oranges,
paintings and pennies, ponds and pants,
quiches and quizzes, questions and queues,
rainbows and rings, rascals and rabbits,
snakes and sprouts, sweets and salts,
trumpets and trains, tables and toasters,
umpires and ukuleles, umbrellas and uniforms,
violets and vests, violins and vials,
wheels and wings, windows and weeds,
xylems and x-rays, xylophones and xysters,
yachts and yoghurts, yards and yaks,
zigzags and zephyrs, ziggurats and zombies.
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 5:03 PM UTC
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
The path of healing is there for us all
It is there for even the most saddest of souls
With God walking by your side
There is nothing to fear
On the path of healing
Iris scented breezes
Waft through this forest path
The sunshine in calm rays
Dews sparkle on tender grasses
And rain has washed delicate leaves
Ferns delicately dance in the cool breezes
That blow through the warm air
The path of healing is very beautiful and comforting
Even through the hardest and saddest of times
When your heart is raw and needs healing
With God leading the way, right by your side
Don't you know, my precious one, that there is nothing to fear?
I am here too, I am God's humble servant
He is my Best Friend and Comforter
And He is yours too, if you allow Him to be, dear one
The path of healing is so beautiful
With green mosses and tulips
Kissed by a mist of dew
Tall, tall trees are growing
On either side of the path of healing
Everything is so peaceful, calm, and tranquil
But it is God's Presence along by your side
That causes your sweet and gentle heart to heal
Maybe you will comfort in my words hear, dear child
If so, then, my precious one,
Don't thank me, thank God
For He is ever knocking
On your beautiful, broken heart
And if you will allow Him
He will enter and softly heal your heart
And that is what the path of healing is all about
Not just ferns washed in dazzling spray
It is the One who created those ferns
He is the path of healing
For if you will allow Him to enter
He will heal even the most broken of hearts
And I know if you ask Him to save you
And truly wish to be His Child
Then, my sweet one, He will heal your heart
And that is how healing begins
Only through God
For He is our path of healing
~Marian~
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
green forest child
you grow in sponge drenched soils
drawing me in - an epiphyte longing
sunlight piercing raindrops
of lettuce lichens drinking
mosses soaked, greening
softly underfoot
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 5:11 PM UTC
Thy bower is finished, fairest!
Fit bower for hunter's bride--
Where old woods overshadow
The green savanna's side.
I've wandered long, and wandered far,
And never have I met,
In all this lovely western land,
A spot so lovely yet.
But I shall think it fairer,
When thou art come to bless,
With thy sweet smile and silver voice,
Its silent loveliness.
For thee the wild grape glistens,
On sunny knoll and tree,
The slim papaya ripens
Its yellow fruit for thee.
For thee the duck, on glassy stream,
The prairie-fowl shall die,
My rifle for thy feast shall bring
The wild swan from the sky.
The forest's leaping panther,
Fierce, beautiful, and fleet,
Shall yield his spotted hide to be
A carpet for thy feet.
I know, for thou hast told me,
Thy maiden love of flowers;
Ah, those that deck thy gardens
Are pale compared with ours.
When our wide woods and mighty lawns
Bloom to the April skies,
The earth has no more gorgeous sight
To show to human eyes.
In meadows red with blossoms,
All summer long, the bee
Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs,
For thee, my love, and me.
Or wouldst thou gaze at tokens
Of ages long ago--
Our old oaks stream with mosses,
And sprout with mistletoe;
And mighty vines, like serpents, climb
The giant sycamore;
And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries,
Cumber the forest floor;
And in the great savanna,
The solitary mound,
Built by the elder world, o'erlooks
The loneliness around.
Come, thou hast not forgotten
Thy pledge and promise quite,
With many blushes murmured,
Beneath the evening light.
Come, the young violets crowd my door,
Thy earliest look to win,
And at my silent window-sill
The jessamine peeps in.
All day the red-bird warbles,
Upon the mulberry near,
And the night-sparrow trills her song,
All night, with none to hear.
2k
.
I see myself in you—
With a spike we two spoke out,
Vagaries of wind, verisimilitudes
And the moon gives us her light.
Black bird, black robed Druid,
We both are spinning round
The hills draped in psalms
Of the oak and windy leaves.
Your words, I hear, go unsaid,
My utterings babble, ring in a rill,
Cold and cascading to mosses,
Bleeding from a lone escarpment.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 3:50 PM UTC
"Mariana in the Moated Grange"
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
1.8k
Orange canoe leaves and castling roots
and a potpourri of rocks and twigs and mosses
hailed my pathway.
Fresh, white flowers mingled with their rusted sisters
upon the ground, like copper-splashed jasper.
The canoe leaves curled
as the white and rusted flowers tumbled through them
like toppled teacups and feathered, Victorian party hats.
Their christened sisters mirrored them among the boughs above
and talked loftily about the treetops
as the fallen ones chattered amidst *******
and the roots dividing the tables of their tea party—
unaware, and heedless, of how far they’d fallen.
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 8:57 PM UTC
460
I know where Wells grow—Droughtless Wells—
Deep dug—for Summer days—
Where Mosses go no more away—
And Pebble—safely plays—
It’s made of Fathoms—and a Belt—
A Belt of jagged Stone—
Inlaid with Emerald—half way down—
And Diamonds—jumbled on—
It has no Bucket—Were I rich
A Bucket I would buy—
I’m often thirsty—but my lips
Are so high up—You see—
I read in an Old fashioned Book
That People “thirst no more”—
The Wells have Buckets to them there—
It must mean that—I’m sure—
Shall We remember Parching—then?
Those Waters sound so grand—
I think a little Well—like Mine—
Dearer to understand—
1.7k
In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.
Sep 29, 2015
Sep 29, 2015 at 6:02 PM UTC
Faded gilding, rubbed through to cracking, flaking wood.
A glamour of ages, sliding, flies to the breeze.
The little bird perches on a once-fine moulding;
Head tilted, one bright eye turned towards the mantle
where a half-blind mercurised mirror barely reflects
an army of creeping vines, consuming naked angels
and the God of this house.
Our hero’s velvets are ruined, dripping and eaten through.
Where riches have lived, decay succeeds.
Nature’s velvets; opulent mosses and emerald lichens
are devouring damask
and smoothing over marbled hardness.
The bird listens for footsteps.
The lady would scatter crumbs on the windowsill
and he would flutter, unafraid,
to peck at her sweet feast.
Once, she drew him.
Fine-lining passerine delicacy,
her pencils fetched him,
and bestowed him an artist’s nobility.
He turned, this way and that,
flashing gold-touched wings,
miming a duchess snapping open a fan.
She’s gone now,
and so have the crumbs.
The bird senses no sugar on the sill,
nor the faintest reminiscence
of lavender perfume, glittering as star bursts
at the hollow of her throat.
He sings regardless,
a mournful beauty
longing to return to a glorious, lustful age,
where light refracted in cut crystal,
danced upon frescoes
and illuminated the ugly –
- to render them enchanting.
He swoops to dance on the mantle,
answered by the mirror
and sits a while, preening.
The gentlemen and ladies are gone forever.
Ejected from history to echo as ghosts of fancy and excess,
undeserving of remembrance or pity.
The bird will never forget.
And knots up secrets
kept tightly in his breast,
committed to his tiny, fierce heart.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 5:15 PM UTC
Just up ahead is a trail
Where people seldom go,
Sidling down the gravel hill
Into growths of ash and birch and elm,
Thickets of wild plums,
Chokecherries, leaves turning dusty,
Verdant armies of stinging nettles
Protecting coveted stands of juneberries.
Bittersweet vines entangle aged elms,
Siphoning life, to produce four petaled reds
As summer goes down to autumn.
Leaving the wind above
To batter the old truck,
I descend into the silence,
Trees stand tall, but low
Below the breeze.
Down in this steep place
The wind cannot come,
The sun, when it finds its way,
Warms gently on the coldest day.
The spring my father dug
Before I was born,
Set into the weeping gravel hill,
Runs steadily,
Strong enough
To fill the battered tank,
To keep a goldfish or two alive,
To host strange crustaceans:
Tiny shrimp, just larger than ants,
Pebble crusted creatures
More insect than fish,
Frogs in the tank,
Toads out...,
Mosses and mud
Thirty years or more
At home.
Deer come to this tank,
On hot days or cold;
Coyotes, too.
Porcupines dine on treetops
Swaying quietly
A hundred feet below
Wild Montana winds.
Cattle in winter find life
In the quiet, constant water
Flowing here.
I am taken back
To a stifling July afternoon,
But cool here in this protected place,
Dragonflies floating
And cicadas sawing in the trees,
My mouth full of juneberries
As I circle my way,
Eating more than picking...
Coming face to face with a coyote.
Was he dozing?
Passing through?
Or, do coyotes eat
Juneberries, too?
We stop hard,
Stunned.
Then bolt in opposite directions,
My juneberries flying
From the milking pail;
His tongue between his teeth,
Tail low,
Feet flying into the brush beyond.
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 10:51 AM UTC