december

 

a collection of shudders

skeletal

in the early winter

the alder trees react
to the cold breeze                                  

rain drapes and drops

fat tears washing down

limbs and trunks     

spatters

to the color drop  

below the knees

saturated leaves

pressed into each other      

like steeped journal pages

this is the record

the progress of a year

Yellow Jacket

Yellow Jacket

He sat on the dashboard, in

the sun tidying up, stroking

the long antennae

as if combing them into place.

Nothing menacing but

looking at the sturdy striped body with

the undisclosed stinger was enough to

remind me of the danger of small

quiet things;  those blended thoughts,

packed full of their unexpected power

until someone leans into them. 

after e e cummings ...works in progress....

Dec. 4th


once

i was calling out   comfort

handing out anything warm and dry   

once consolation of  only i while

you 

        sowed displeasure

 reaping stones 

i was   while passing out pillows
weary among the in-depth of 

between you throwing

assured of  wreckage 
while I  weeping sweeping my glass house
   -in front of  strangers of broken-

was gathering dinner 

swallowing rocks




Dec. 5th

to Jon

handsome however you grow
to love you is to know

    you of the once small
 hands  outgrowing   all

my ideals lost on maps of
napkin and drawn of

sticks in sand wave-washed
out-tide rushed
your new face blushed 

    my youthful sketches  

thoughts like  twining rosy vetches

i am clinging   salt-soaked seaside
love-draped   nodding tide

of mother

Rewrite Turquoise

No Taj Mahal

I am the kind of woman
some man should build a pool for.  I am

the kind  of woman who appreciates
the reflection of the whole sky.  One 

who delights in clouds daffodil yellow,
clouds the color of sweet plums,

clouds as tall as masted ships
and clouds that hold lightning like

fireflies in a jar.
I will spend my hour of free time
languorously

swimming through that sky.
Pool of stars, pool of morning,
pool of heaven.

I am the kind of woman who wants
a small darling house, next to that pool, one

that blocks no view and lets in the light,
every light the sun and moon have to offer.

I am the kind of woman who is
jealous of the cat and dog that sleep 

in the pane of light cast on the floor like a mat.   

In spring I will bring in
yellow forsythia branches
to dress my blue vases,

in the winter I, like a snake charmer,
will draw out the white amaryllis.  I don't ask for much. 

I've learned not to ask for much-- my life
has been a workshop for that.  But.

One turquoise pool, clear as a conscience

catching every point of light, beside a modest home.

As long as I am asking, after years of not,

may it overlook a pasture, a green pasture

full of emerald-bright and lapis blue dragonflies

and may it all

overlook the ocean.  

I am asking.

Turquoise

Turquoise

I am the kind of woman someone should build a pool for.
The kind who appreciates the reflection of the whole sky, one who
delights in clouds daffodil yellow and clouds the color of bruises and
clouds as tall as buildings, clouds that hold lightning like
fireflies in a jar.
I will spend my hour of free time languorously
swimming through that sky.  I am the kind of woman
who wants a small, darling house that blocks no view
and lets in the light, every light the sun and moon have to offer
and who is jealous of the cat and dog
that sleep in the pane of light cast on the floor
like a mat.   I will bring in the yellow forsythia branch
in spring and raise the white amaryllis like a charmer of snakes
in the winter.  I don't ask for much, I've learned not to
ask for much, my life has been a workshop for that.  But.
One pool beside a home, one turquoise pool
clear as a conscience, catching every point of light.
As long as I am asking, after years of not
asking, may it overlook a pasture, a green pasture
full of emerald-bright dragonflies and electric blue dragonflies
and may it all
overlook the ocean.  I am asking.

Direction

Fog-infected morning, cold

and damp as a fever-broken brow.

They were lost to me beyond the fog,

geese overhead, all noise

and no substance, like memories,

calling back and forth to each other.

Me, land-locked, with places to go

and no wings.  I gave them up long ago,

turned them in with my slighter dreams.
Every fall I wish them back.  

Gladly I would fly away, answer the call.

Happy to know where I was going.

The Pond

Was it more sky than water?
Of course, more water, but the sky
was evident in the reflection.
The pond stared unblinking
speaking only gray clouds until
the muted daylight was gone. Geese,
two of them, skidded to a stop
across it just as night cleared
its throat.

The Heron

Counts it bad luck
to stand in water all day
one leg wet is enough
he tucks the other tightly away
his needle-beak ever poised
above his marshy dinner plate
he doesn't even like fish
you can see it in his reserve
that stiff narrow gray disgust

Clarity, The Answer

Clarity

                                Is the clarity, the simplicity, an arriving or an emptying out?

                                If the heart persists in waiting, does it begin to lessen?

                                If we are always good does God lose track of us?  Jack Gilbert, The Answer

If we are always good, does God lose track

of us?  What comfort is there in hoping now-

the heart nearer the end than the beginning?

You lie beside me doubting, numbering fears

the way I number blessings.  You wake

in the night and feel something important

standing there.  Sleep lost to you, you rise

to stare at your gray reflection under the bathroom light. 

There is your clarity, your promise, as long as the eyes

open and the heart beats.  There is your revelation.  
The silence in you

is absolute and inconvenient.  I cannot enter into it

with you.  I kiss you and want to tell you

in a meaningful way:  I remember

a morning at the beach when I was a girl.

It was so early it was both dawn and night. 

The wind pulled at my hair and stirred the grasses

where I sat on the white sand dune. 

My family was far down the shore. 

Near me, a heron rose blue-gray against the palest

part of the sky.  The music of the waves

played for me alone, and I knew that it

kept playing when I was gone.


This is a Response poem to Jack Gilbert's  The Answer.  Here is Mr. Gilbert's poem:

Is the clarity, the simplicity, an arriving
or an emptying out?  If the heart persists
in waiting, does it begin to lessen?
If we are always good does God lose track
of us?  When I wake at night, there is 
something important there.  Like the humming
of giant turbines in the high-ceilinged stations 
in the slums.  There is silence in me,
absolute and inconvenient.  I am haunted
by the day I walked through the Greek village 
where everyone was asleep and somebody began
playing Chopin, slowly, faintly, inside
the upper floor of a plain white stone house.

Enough of Fairy Tales

When will I be good enough for you

to love?  Shall I weave thistles

into clothes?  Turn straw to gold

enough ransom to buy back your favor?

There are fables enough of wicked

parents-mostly mothers.  Stories

peopled with forlorn children-mostly daughters- the purer

their hearts the more dire the circumstance.

Maybe if fathers told the stories- some fathers-

instead of mothers, the daughters

would all be safe long before the necessary evils threatened.

Mothers adore happy endings, morality

plays, coated salty and sweet.  

All’s well that ends well enough.

My story.  It’s too sad.  There is never

a happy ending.  It only begins.

Once she had a father.  And then,

it ends.

Rewrite Mimosa

MIMOSA

The mimosa bristled pink outside my bedroom window,

its leaves collapsed in the dark, closed like rows of praying hands. 

Each summer night I fell asleep with the scent

of it, soft and powdery, clinging to my dreams. 

When I was rewriting my days in September

with sharpened number 2s still tagged

with cleanest pink erasers and it was nearly officially fall,

mornings broke wet and chilly,

heavy as wool blankets left on the clothesline overnight.

By noon the heat would build, would stifle,

so mornings I shivered in shirt sleeves, waiting

beside the dewy green wisteria, past its purple prime.

Uncomfortable in my own new shoes,

still stiff and shiny, 

I tried to summon confidence

before the bus arrived. 

Sometimes I plucked a feathery mimosa flower and

tucked it behind my ear on the way to the end of the driveway.

I imagined myself pretty and exotic, brave for being different,

like a Haight-Ashbury hippy in my red-neck town.

Overhead a single mockingbird

layered one song over another.  Romantic that I was,

I began my listening believing

it sang because its little bird heart overflowed

but I knew it was only borrowing from its nature.

The first notes seemed plaintive, for the lost night and dreams;

liquid, fluid, much like  my mother gently moving me

into the day and off to junior high.

As the bus topped the hill, 

that unctuous bird became sharp and shrill,

still carrying on, nagging like a conscience. 

Impostor and thief of songs!  I left the flower on the lawn,

too soon convinced we were both liars.

Beyond the Waste Land

Should April be the cruelest month,

then August will do us in, all

the sparks flying from sun off water-

igniting the tinder of past loves and losses.

Bright lit corners along the curbs,

deprived of dark mystery and lovers, 

beneath the trees shake every last leaf

of memory down upon us, blown along-

the whisper scraping of what once was

and what is,

mumbles of the summer wind,

foretelling  the winter and

of what might have been.   

We curl up, dying daily

beneath that scorching summer grin, infatuated

with the hopeful light and cloudless days

only to find fitful rest

between the roots remembering

the once green  life above us.  Gone

the hyacinth and lilac, gone even now the lillies,

sere.   You are the last vestige of your own desire.

Red-flagged

Confederate flag

fading from red to pink with

dimming stars and bars

claim this kindom of

old trucks in parts and rusting

frames of cadillacs

mobile home aging

white to gray, dented siding,

beer cans, home sweet home

to some kind of pride

I do not understand, as

pit bulls stand on guard.

Pearls

Pearls

When finally you think you could smile

again, you realize your teeth are broken

and you hide behind your own fist.

Not what you expected

except in that dream state

where you saw your teeth

rolling across the floor, spilling

like pearls before

you could close your lips.

Now you tell yourself

the sure secret of starting over—

You are not the same.  

For a dead cicada

For a dead cicada

A wall of sound

cicadas thrum in the tree

in the heat a crescendo

like mystics conjuring

tropical fevers or verdant lust

One lies near the roots

fallen silent and still

wings like unstained Tiffany glass,

big as your thumb  

crisp as fried pork rinds

hollowed out by ants

six legs bent as if 

it did not make it through

one last evening  prayer

Diaphanous

Diaphanous

Dragonfly wings spread

Pairs of oblong kites

Crackled cellophane panels

Church panes without stains

Fragile fractured flight of prayer

Busy glint of silver

Overhead stitching 

Sky to air and day to night and

God to uncomplicated souls.

Maple Leaves

Citrine bits scatter sown over

the lake’s memory of black quartz

drifting like golden, light filled dories.

So the sowing goes all day

across the broad field of the water.

Off and on, in gusts

of well-populated wind

but sometimes in an artful dropping.

One by one each leaf settles on its twin

until the maples lose all their inhibitions .

Sifted

Daytona Beach


Salted,
white sand encrusted
and wind blown,
noses strawberry red
shoulders blistering
we licked our lips
thirsty
from playing all day
in the waves

waiting
standing in the wind
settling our feet deeply in the sand
against the rip current
that pulled at our ankles
standing ankle-deep
looking out to sea

our hands were so small
a sand dollar filled them
completely
and cut
into the hinges of our fingers
when we tried to close our fists

a thousand small shells split
beneath our bare feet
but we felt no pain
empty relics
periwinkles
thin and crunchy
ruined
pressed into the wet sand

the littler boys ran
whooping
following the boogie boarders
muscled and tan

the young girls clumped coyly
together, walking
along the strand
in limbo
among the sunbathers
whose mature breasts filled out
bikini bras

Mimosas

It would be a scorcher, no doubt, even in September
when we were rewriting our days with newly sharpened
number 2s still tagged with pinkest clean erasers
and we knew it was nearly officially autumn.

No matter that the morning broke wet and chilly,
heavy as a woolen blanket left on the clothesline overnight,
by noon the heat would build, would stifle. 
Standing where the school bus stopped

shivering in shirt sleeves, waiting
beside the wisteria then past her purple prime, dripping
green and dewy, uncomfortable in my own shoes
still stiff and shiny, I tried to summon confidence

before the bus arrived. 

Looking back toward home, there was the ache to re-enter
my safe, familiar room.  Outside my window
the mimosa bristled pink, its leaves collapsed, closed
like praying hands.  Each warm night I fell asleep with

the scent of it soft and powdery, clinging to my dreams.
Overhead a mockingbird, thief, imposter,
layered one borrowed song over another.
At first the notes were liquid, fluid, like my mother moving

me into the day, plaintive for the lost night and dreams.
Soon the unctuous bird seemed sharp and shrill, still
carrying on, nagging like a conscience.  The longer he continued
the more I was convinced we both were liars,

wanting desperately to fit in somewhere.

Pearls

When you think you finally could smile

again, you realize your teeth are broken

and you hide behind your own fist.

Not what you expected except in that dream state

where you saw your teeth

rolling across the floor, spilling

like pearls before

you could close your lips.

Now you tell yourself

the sure secret of starting over—

You are not the same.