As soft as tulips
flesh of young girls
captivates. The plusher arms of women
are familiar as the sun-warmed
thick
of grass grown sweet
to gather in, be gathered by
the fecund feel and spongy warmth
of ripened fruit. In truth
the girls are gladsome,
but trees mature
are shelter more than sapling's
tender
shoots.
Small Galapagos
Mudgreen, humped and slick in eddies
shocked with silver light, the squat rock
moves by micro-inches. Claws leave gouges
gauging how he creeps along the sodden sand
abandoned-seeming.
Slow determined crawl to feed and sun a while,
this carapaced and patterned dome,
this tank that breathes,
he plods the broken shell, the bits of net.
In sun's scorch, a shadow passes
back and forth and rides the beach,
it's talons score the sky. A hunter
hangs from heaven, waits the dive
that jets the blood from flesh new-ripped.
Creatures yet intact, but terror-struck
are beats away from final sleep-
the tender ones who run in fear.
The turtle takes his time. He turns a head
that looks with eyes as wise,
as old as sin.
He knows that God is good.
Hidden
Inside the
secret pleats of me
there are more
petals, and a pearl.
This pink
trinket given me at birthInside the
secret pleats of me
there are more
petals
and a pearl.
This
pink
trinket given me
at birth
so in the dark
your fingers fold, unfold the flower till you
find dew has quite unrolled, revealed
the hidden clam-gem
there and like a
diver
you go
own.
Hush
The ax that's swung into the sun
has one, brief instant there among
the dancing dust, so hushed it's tongue
is still until
that moment spills into the one
that brings the kill.
'Potential' is the breath of God
held tight until His will can jog
a continent to clap the sod
a world away.
His power is the folded fog
before the day.
The Impressionist
Not hands-
not the opposing thumbs,
the fine phalangeal span that dancers knew
could bend them with such grace,
as God,
a flower could,
but claws,
that at the end would still command them
come to canvas.
Bend them all
in pinks and palest blue,
black ribbons at their throat.
The arcs of flesh
he stroked from blooms of net,
the circular skirt, and legs
as long as mind will go: ballet
had hooded sex.
And at the end,
his brush was placed
into
arthritic
agony. Degas' hand was a claw
that on a canvas
scratched
and cracked
through pain to love.
Leavings
Autumn is a cello,
minor key
and silver mist.
I lift my face to sky
to watch oblique of geese
cut through
opaquing blue.
Cicada chorus rising
throbs on gold before the dark,
and this one leaf, so rapt with wind that
when it falls
may break my heart.
Nature Shock
The knoll rolled softly out:
an unbaked crust just dropped
and barely crimped up at the edges.
There were hedges near behind
that handsome held the vast and emerald in.
A faultless,
dream of green lay preened
and hush upon the hill
beneath the luster
of colliding, cobalt sky.
That was astonishment enough
but when a
surge of birds
flew music in a swell, a sweep of wings,
I was purged
of all that held me to the ground.
All the tenants of my soul that keep me bound,
that could not soar were left
behind-
a sleeping hill, a thrill of wings
a cleaner heart
a clearer thing
not caring
that a heart is not a bird, that it hears
a hue of green and blue
that never can be heard.
Night Laps
When I feel the evening
lapping about my face and hair
and think
in black leaves hanging softly
from darkened bark
distant and dim,
I ease myself
into the universe
and become quietly whispered
into that silence
of which the day can only dream.
I make my way
between the blades of grass
yielding sweetness, and I find YOU
waiting there,
for only a moment.
There
making the sweetness
and gathering the softness about me like fleece.
I sleep the songs of silken lives
and I breathe your body into the night.
We live
a second long.
The night laps about my face and hair
and YOU are there
and for a moment,
a second song
is sung.
Pole Men
Nighttimes, my dreams float away
in little boats
poled by men with hidden faces
softly
breaking surface of the water.
The plash of pole
cutting
through the roll of wet
gets dreams; fade
to mountains,
fade to skyed
heights,
I no
longer know.
I am adrift
in someone else
and she is happy.
A Feeling For Things On The Day
Of The Pennsylvania Cave-In
The senseless cruelty
is what leaves my heart
hung open, unable to
close, protect itself.
Today,
it was a
bumble bee, fat happy
hummer, no-sting
inquistive,
fuzzy tumbler in the air around a
coworker, a fellow
smoker. As he talked to me, the yeller feller
large enough to leash, he got too close
and Dan made a handball move
and thwacked him
with a fist;
smacked him off a
wall of the building where he lay
a stunned and vibrating
absolute.
My mouth made open, no sound
roundness;
eyes so big with looking at the thing when
I heard,
'Teach that fucker
to mess with me. Tore off a wing,
didn't it?'
I bent in half,
staring hard, and happy to find two
tight-folded
to its twitchy, shivering body, big as half
my thumb. 'Nope.
He'll be alright, he'll be...' , Dan flicked his butt
and went
inside.
I watched the bee, quiver,
turn in taut and
tantric
circles, first one way
then the other, over and over, like someone
with no place to run but into pain again,
and I wondered
why that man
had seen the need to try and annihilate
without a thought. The blindness,
striking out
is what's so
frightening, and the
bee- how must he have seen the world, at once
go hard and
hurting as a hammer; was it apiarian panic I was
witnessing- the pointless, circular curls
and counter-clockwise twirls of hopelessness, life become
adrenaline shot through every cell- and I thought of all the
hells
we throw each other against. I wondered how
the universe
doesn't spin in full reverse- when suddenly,
the little guy took a two inch
upward leap, then twice, and wings caught
something fine and off he flew to dreams of pollen
and home. The sanity of nature ticking
tocking in its time as hee sought a
current. He was going
to the places where the bees
all go to buzz about their day. I was left to
ponder how very ugly, how very
beautiful it all is-
..........and how
chillingly random; those who make it- those who don't
like crash boom bang the
mine
falls into
mine and nine get out
and nine
stay in.
....From The Tree Of