Caterpillars drop from trees

Photo of African Emprer Moth caterpillar taken by Lillian Reddy; borrowed from (and poem inspired by) Kerry O'Connor and Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads

Caterpillars drop 

             From trees,

                Curled with hope

                          And possibility.

                            Watch your tread;

                             Even one less

                          Is one too many.

                      Even one moth

                  Less is chaos, 

              A kingdom

Of infinite loss.

On being a poet

On being a poet 

It's awful, having nothing to say,

To sit silent like a toad,

Breathing in and breathing out.

Yet how pleased he seems

To sit, sun and shadows,

Breeze to stir the reeds.

Look how his sides heave,

A bellows of deep rhythms.

Nothing in the bright bead eyes

Of shame or want. No whipping 

For missed flies, regret or condemnation.

Only is. Only am. Only he,

Uncensored by his mind,

Free to breathe. Little Buddha, 

Free to be. 

Time reclaims all work

Photo prompt  The Mag

Time reclaims all work

See,  in the breach

a  green, springy thing,

stronger than the prairie,

more tenacious than a tree.

A strange glow calls me from my book

Come away. Look about:

Orangish yellow light behind

The lowering clouds --

Even the grass is burnished.

Poplars glow before mountains,

Heavy in dark relief--

The whole world is written in

Gold leaf, every branch and sheaf 

Illuminated, testament to glory.

Weeding

Your burrs rub me,

Hitchhike for the ride.

Your nettles pierce

Until I bleed.

Your juice gets under my skin,

and so, I itch.

The  difference, I find,

Between a weed and a flower

Is desire.

So Dear

So Dear

Everywhere, next day, I looked 

For that helpless speckled thing,

Patient forest babe, all ears and eyes, 

Watching, waiting, staying.

Gone, as I had hoped, gone 

From underneath the tree

To walk beside her mother. 

Before long, she will walk alone, 

Gambol, jump and play.

I hope she sees another day. 

I hope she comes to stay

Where she was born, 

Where she lay beneath 

The Blue Spruce tree with me.

Joshua Tree

I tried once to write about a Joshua Tree,
How it scrubs the desert air with many arms,
But I who live among the Oak and Maple,
Beside the Poplar, alongside Willow sweeps,
With Fir and under reaching Pine,
Who watch the Tamarack coat the earth
With tiny golden combs, who wait
For Redbud signs of spring,
Whose Serviceberry, Apple, Pear, and Plum
Make drunk the bees, sate the birds,
Then drowse in lazy autumn,
I could not find the term for that
Flintstone desert plant.
I could perhaps try crayon,
Pale yellow, black, some green,
Not this pack of forty-eight,
Not these fat words I wrap my hands around,
Not Sweetgum. Cottonwood. Persimmon.
Not Deciduous. Majestic. Not this ever ever green.

Poplar Creek

Poplar Creek

Rocks covered with moss,
rough bark I scratch
against my palm,
the swarm jousting
in a patch of light
that sneaks beneath the trees,
the inimitable sound
of water fleeing
over sand and stone,
the silly smile I wear
when wandering alone
as a child wears
when hoarding secret treasure,
the need for pen,
for words, for record,
the small winged thing
that rides inside with me
when I come
to tell my pleasures.

Patio de los Naranjas

Patio de los Naranjas

  

They say the fruit is bitter,

But the air of Seville sings

Citrus, a chorus that lines

The ancient gardens.

Smooth stones make faces

On the ground, where every

Good boy does fine

Beneath a Spanish sky,

Where he who sings prays twice,

Where solo is an aria of orange.

Accompaniment

Accompaniment

The poplars sway

Then stop as sudden --

A whole note rest

Alert for the baton

The beat of birds

The wind’s ornamentation.

Thirst

THIRST


It's in the way the rain falls
     in sharp, inexorable drops

until the world is long lines,
     stitching sky to earth.

It's in the driving needles
     that push hungry fawns to group
          and bed beneath the drooping birch.

It's in the urge that makes them
     nuzzle sodden earth, returning,

 little by little, through a new washed world
     in certainty  and wonder

in search of tender shoots.

One

ONE


Cradled by earth’s soft arms
Against the common heart,
All parts are one --

Particle and part --

Stem and leaf and heavy head
Bending back, begin again

One  beating breast
One  spreading seed,
one spirit shared,

one universal flower

Beyond All This

Jeanne Iris is driving the Poetry Bus, and as I've missed the last two runs, I'm early at the stop this week.

This poem was inspired by the first line of a Philip Larkin poem. As a matter of fact, I've purloined that entire line to begin this poem. You might notice that Hamlet sneaked in there, too.  Apologies to both gentlemen.

As for the Bus, I've chosen Option II, reaching a higher level of consciousness. You can read the other options and find links to some very talented writers here. The Bus officially runs on Monday.


BEYOND ALL THIS

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
To cast aside this bag of cells and bone,
To fly beyond this corporeal home;

To be alone, beyond all this to flee,
Unveiled, unmasked, exposed, in spirit free
To move among the stars and simply be.

It is a wish devoutly to be won:
Beyond all this, to flee, to sail, to run
With stars and moon and wind and sea and sun.

about a sunflower

ABOUT A SUNFLOWER


I am  sitting tonight in front of the window
staring at the blackness staring back. A cozy scene:
a woman, seated at a worn wooden table, a bowl
of oranges and lemons in front of her, an arrangement
of cheerful plates on the wall behind, pen in hand,
her arm lying across a paper angled just so, big dark eyes
like holes in her face looking back from the glass.
All summer, I watched from this same seat
a sunflower, a tall hairy stem, pointy sepal arms,
hundreds of bumpy brown seeds, bursting
little teeth, little rows hoed in circles, a plinking
stone in a still brown pond,
bonneted, beribboned, turning this way
and that, reaching up a round child's face,
angling for her father, a heavy earthen mother,
finally falling beneath her weighty thoughts, beaten
by the rain, become a blinded skull, her eyes pecked out.
Examined from the ground up, imagined
from the sky down -- the worm's view, the crow's view,
in memory, the poet's view -- a blind reflection
in the glass tonight while the words can't find
where the woman fits in the scheme
of all these things.

Progress

NanU's driving the Bus on Monday, and her challenge is to write in a time, place, or circumstance outside of our usual writing environments. 

Many times, I am struck with inspiration while driving but lose my thoughts because I can't stop to write them down. This morning, two things happened that allowed me to fulfill the Poetry Bus challenge. First, I noticed that a barn I pass every day had been razed, and second,  traffic stopped right in front of the scene. I grabbed my handy iphone and used my thumbs to type the following poem on the Notes page, then I emailed it to myself. Okay, NanU. How's that for Progress? Hmmm...

PROGRESS

In the field
where the barn
used to stand,
progress has left
only a scar --
a few black wires
hooping out
of the ground,
brown earth
scraped clean,
packed down,
devoid of any living thing.
In the pasture,
white cows turn their heads
and look the other way.

Spinning Wonder

SPINNING WONDER

I'm showing you the poetry
In a silken strand that shoots
From tree to bush then waves
On the wind over the water and back
To land upon the branches of the trees,

And I'm thinking of this magic,"Let it be,"

While you try so hard, over and over
In that way you have of never letting go to sail
On strands of magic, to explain the science
Of spinning such a marvel to one who only wants 

To live her life in astonishment and wonder.

Milkweed

Milkweed

Why did it take me
          so many years
                    to know

that it is the milkweed,
          before it bursts
                    with sticky fluid,

          before it pops
                    its silky pods
                    of fluff,

that fills the nights
          with heady,
                    heavy Heaven?

Butterfly Bush

I have discovered
Like a child right now
Why it is called
Butterfly Bush,
This soft flick of midnight
On arching lilac flowers,
This quick flit of magic
On heavy, dusky stems.
And this is why
Like a child right now,
I  am glad to be alive
And of this world--
This powdered brush of gleaming joy,
This fleeting rush of angels breathing.

Judgment

And then there’s this:
a tall tree trembling in the storm
like I will stand at judgment
uncertain that my roots will hold
before the breath of God.

The Bluest Bird

The Bluest Bird

The bluest bird I ever saw was in the middle of the road,

And I, going forty-five on a lane made for fifteen,

Couldn’t stop in time to take a good look, so a quick flit

Of true blue was all I saw lifting into the morning air.

Even I thought it strange that I managed to see the silver and blue

Of the can an oncoming driver lifted as he squeezed past

And the blue sky mirrored in another driver’s shades,

But the shade of the ruby breast on that bluest bird,

I missed, moving way too fast on a road not made for speed

On a silvery morning, missing, too, the tender notes

From a throat that could have lifted me high into a sky so blue

It might have hurt my eyes.