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Green
My friends are gathering for my
first Christmas without you. They have
always held me up. You, who once
had bells and bulbs adorning your
limbs, will not be near us--not
that you weren't invited--all year
long I called you, and all year long
your machine drolled out, "No," as though
you knew I called and called. Not our
friends. They never call you: They've
promised. So my wreaths ring their door.
My egg nog swirls for them. You held
me up once. Now, they string popcorn
and drape me with their lights--isn't
that what they're for? Or am I
still loving you? Green as you were?
Poor Replica
O, you, poor replica of a bleeding
heart, your flowers and your leaves appear
then disappear through no one's fault I can
account for--not mine, at least, since I have
never given you soil nor water
but what buries you or flows down at its
own speed, season by season--so what do
your shortcomings and leavings show, a tall
oak's might, a thin maple's--the large lack I
have for you, you who have grown not full
--who has spread your failure all over me?
Err
When I thought I'd bought a bottle brush bush
and it hadn't bloomed, my disappointment
was my own. Now, it's bloomed and I see it's
a powder puff! Which is more telling, my
ignorance over plants or my open
joy at these huge, red, pincushion puffs!
Every hour I must walk the yard
to watch if any more cones blossom.
My intoxication with these buds is
enormous. I ration my trips, so my
wife doesn't think me mad, but even she
loves these bright explosions--they remind her
of "something" which, here, ever becomes mute.
Phlox
Those purple phlox--that's what they are
--underneath the great green blindness
of the empty billboards--run mile
after mile along the shoulders
and into the fields, to the trees,
into the washed-out pits and streams
that drain the highway as I lumber
along in the rain--my big right
foot hunkering down on the gas
--I glide farther with one push
on the pedal than any ox
drawn wagon--mile after mile nestle
beneath my wheels, and white lines drain
the blacktop while signs strain my eyes
--the purple roadside, the purple
blinding me and my shoulders melting
into my seat until my dreams
putt away from me, and Eighty
Four signs point us to 'turn here.'
Wildflowers
Each year our daily has a feature
on wildflowers that reminds us
not to cast these seeds on the wind
but prepare the ground as we would
for any annual not now
classified as "wild." How are we
to differentiate wild from tame,
at least as flowers go? When does
their sturdiness make them weeds
to most--while delicates need our
sturdy ways to keep them fresh?
Shouldn't these flowery weeds be
loved as much as heather or holly?
Or have we gone mad with flower
tending and tend to love those
most who need protection or love?
Dustbin
In our garage, we have a dustbin full
of old boards that we have promised to sand,
shape, or use somehow but know they had best
wait. Cedar ones spurn us--we can tell when
their odor, pungent yet friendly, swims beyond
us as we try to sniff them. Pine, also.
Only the anonymous wood--paint thickened
--springs to our touch as though it knows when its
time is ripe we will rise to it, sander
at hand, shape in mind. But they are all wrong.
We don't have a dream for them except, 'dustbin.'
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