|
Looking Glass
What can I see when I look
through the magnifier: bigger
leaves with tiny veins like mountains
and mites like dinosaurs? What makes
me want to see enlargement
instead of scale--4X, 10X
instead of X? What leaf will seem
best? I can't decide between rose
and maple--one is orange now
while the other is still green
--orange, flakey, and withered compared
with the uniform quickness
of a green, close-veined ellipsis
--one with patterns, the other
with no valleys nor rifts. Who spread
mucous trails has left. Who indulged
herself along these narrow trails
can't be satisfied with quick blooms
but must pace urgently along
the maple's bark into its leaves
--its happy centers, and when all
else is escaping, penetrate.
Moll
Yes, somewhere still in a bush is your heart
--stone sharpened on the hinge of desperate
longing--open, shut and still no searcher
at your marks to rescue you from black earth.
Courage, one could say that gallantly they'd
persevere, but who could deny pain steeped
in the brush where your bones bake burrowing
beneath moss and leaves, fall, winter, and spring?
Here, it's summer and they dig and trowel
with energy--unforced yet willed to roll
you from that grave unknown stretching broadly
along the riverside, trail, park, and road.
Your bathing suit then bones their only clues
scattered in the woods by things that craved you.
Rambler
Why did we buy
these ramblers--:we
don't crush their blooms
in books, scoop their
thorns into boxes,
save their switches
for some Lenten
rule--:painful to
train, we grab them
by mistake, prick
our fingers, wrists,
knuckles so our
blood empties in
to their blossoms
where bees suck our
redness away
when the sun burns
scarlet to black.
Nought
How long can she endure
her own poems? A sheep
in sheep's clothing, she heaps
simple on simplicity
until the only word
left is 'snout' but even
that becomes 'out' then 'O'
entitled "Song" then "O"
which itself amounts 0
--perhaps what she'd always
sought--the cipher, or hole,
or empty whoosh like chimes
in the temple heard struck
by sticks--:or that gong hit
by a huge mallet sent
swinging--:a wild soda
can hollowed by her poems'
enormous thirst--:ahhh!
Lily or Iris
To be that other thing completely,
whether lily or iris, is to wait
two or three summers until it can bloom
like your voice rising in the morning
and closing with evening. Some days, no voice
because you're away in another town
and we miss one another--not even
a message for our machine. To be
that one with the other, to raise one voice
above the other, love--eternity
can forgive our small competition
when voices collide and wrestle, bearing
over--but the loss of one voice, even
eternity in its own stone silence
can't allow for that loss, that leaving
that seems so eternal but is really
that other thing, lily or iris.
Begemot
As I said to my Sunday school,
"When the angel's Cup-Bearer darts
at us with the Sun at his back
how will he find Us since we are
Hidden beneath and within his
shade of Death: who can conceive him?"
Not my students who ask again
how he came to be: See How He
Came To Be: "Walk the pebbled Lane
where he grew: go and see the Quad
where he roomed then dance at his Hall:
drink tea in his Parlor and sit
at his desk: peek in his Closet
--touch silk Chanel #5 skirts
he swapped at the Variety:
peruse books in his Library:
wander through his Garden." His mind's
Nature ranges forever front
and back at the same Time echoing
every Calamity--like feasts
his Harvests unfold--his mind passes
Creation as the "top-shelf, one
stop source" for the end of Archives.
Name Game
Restraint, we don't have--the birds, the trees, all
have to listen to us--doves, woodpeckers,
cardinals gather around us, and we
give it to them--they round oaks, powder puff,
ligustrum--they must listen, all ears, all
gums, all beaks, their patter, swirl, and rustle.
We grade them, classify them--you birds, some
of you are called cardinals, but we call
you, 'ruby birds'--some of you are called oak,
but we call you, 'fall-in-our-yard'--some, doves,
but we call you, 'weeps'--some, gum, but we call
you, 'glass'--some, heron, then, 'wrinkle tail'
--powder puff, then, 'Scotch hair'--ligustrum,
then, 'diseased'--woodpecker, then, 'hammer
hammer,' then, 'take apart ants and slugs, grubs
to your tube tongues, suck and plunder'--we call
and you answer, 'Ree-bok, Ree-bok, Ree-bok.'
|
