haiku from martin's brook

meltwater rushing,
the roaring din of its voice.
still, how still the rocks.

the crabapple

How do I explain,

when I watch the branch of a crabapple

nodding in the gentle breeze,

that I feel it through the window.

Her twigs and leathery leaves

play across my cheek, just here.

Please, this is no metaphor;

understand that the air is my

body, and also the tree.

The eyes of myself are watching

my thin, branching arm

bob in the wind, my own breath.

By understand I mean 

stand under, which 

only your body can do.

If your fingers are (and they are) 

the wind, tell me- whose

cheek? whose feathers?

What craggy mountaintop

would you feel, suddenly,

like iron on your lips?

this and that

There is a desk before me.

On it are piles of paperclips, 

a highlighter bouquet in a baby food jar.

Small stacks of paper, a box of beads,

a turtle shell filled with drill bits, twist ties.

A stapler,

this and that.

These things consume me,

their correct configuration.

I slide them first here, these with those,

then there, each thing alone. 

I rearrange, and rearrange, and rearrange. 

Above the desk there is a window. 

Outside it is a craggy tree,

a jay, a rose-colored mountain, 

falling snow, a red squirrel hurrying by.

 A chickadee,

this and that.

about the houseplants

At least, when they whither,

There are crumpled leaves to pick off.

I only notice them when there is nothing else to do.

My nurturing is an after thought, almost a mistake.

Others are, I imagine, cooing gentle angels of growth.

Their fingertips are like root-endings.

What is it, that I can cull, instead of encourage?

The dry, crinkled leaves remind me of crepe,

Or my winter-lips.

I understand the pulling off, the picking, the paring down.

I can feel the rough paper veins shatter

In my own dry palms.

New growth, that is a mystery, and I think

Bother, I shall probably drown you too.

I will worry you to browning.

At least, then, I’ll heed the call.

There must be undertakers, who in

brown and broken leaves

find purpose.

things that i do*

I pay my taxes, I meet Reindeer.

I stroll through the garden of (literally) Eden and turn to gold under an Aspen.

I drink too much wine.

I write a poem to the sunrise, to the hurricane, to the chickadee whose fluff is tousled, who must have met the blackberry.

I grind my teeth, the hangnail is infected again, I stub my toe. I see black ink dripping between my fingers, I spin the red base wheel of spirit.

I plant metaphorical seeds, I ignore the compost and toss the banana peel.

I smudge the corners and forget myself.

I paint a goldfinch, neglect the voicemail, and fall asleep early.

I meet my God in the grout.

*sometime in 2013

lilacs gone wild

I like our old and wild lilacs. No one has hummingly tended them, no gloved gardener in pleated work shorts has cinched her wide-brimmed hat and knelt or stretched for the dead brown sprays. They are ropey old broads, a collective of them. They’ve dispensed with show and gone for height. They are too wicked and busy to clear the unproductive suckers. Perhaps that’s where they hang their potions.

It’s the old turn-about. At first the scraggy shrubs sat on my chest like another chore, a should just about last in line behind getting the garden in and weeding the blueberries. I interpreted it according to me. My lilacs, my house, my judgment. What might people think of us, new-neighbors-with-their-abandoned-lilacs?

Now I couldn’t care less. I freaking love those goddamn winners. If I stop thinking about myself for one hot second they explode in wild, exquisite singularity. I don’t think anyone planted them – or someone planted one a good long time ago and they’ve spread by suckers ever since. No one can really see them, anyway. They have their own agenda. They are twisted with ragged bark, like old grape or laurel. They reach away from the shade of the oak, into my shaggy lawn. Neighboring alpacas nibble their backsides.

I suppose they are cultivars, and as such might be happy with some attention and care and coaxing. But I’m not eating them any time soon – I’ll diligently prune the apples and raspberries. I don’t even care if they stop flowering. I want to see what those gnarly old birds can do. 

sensory time, late summer

“August” doesn’t mean a thing, not really. Or “July” or “September,” for that matter. Summer says something, and late summer even more, but still it makes one wonder whether you are referring to Chronos’ clock or the content of the year. Tell me where we are, when the shadows fall, and what the light is doing, and on whom it’s falling.

Are we at dandelion, after bud but before bedstraw? Are the hemlocks still two-toned with their fresh new growth? Tell me about the jewelweed – cotyledon stage, those two first juicy sprouts? Or is its gooey stem yet the size of your thumb? Are we after its orange upside-down cornucopia flowers, in the midst of springing seed pods? Then the sunchokes must be out, taking the place of the black-eyed susans. Have the acorns fallen? And the milkweed! Tell me about the milkweed. Leaf, bud, purplish-pink flower? Green pod or brown? This will tell me if I need a sweater.

If the fields are covered in milkweed flowers, here is summer’s height. Past the fervor of solstice, warmer languid days, with autumn still far off. I know how quickly to walk, I know to still expect a warbler here and there, I know there are still plenty of swimming days left. If the flowers are gone and the pods are green, then perhaps the nights are chilly. There may be back-to-school sales, and the Virginia creeper might be flushing scarlet, and the sumac too, just at their tips. An errant leaf aflame. But the days are still warm and slow. Brown pods, though, and the crows are calling more insistently. The thrushes have probably left, with most of the warblers. It’s still robins, and the goldfinches will dominate.

Use your ears, too, they can tell time. Stand under a silver maple or a cottonwood. Do they whisper? Rustle? Rattle? Your chosen onomatopoeia will let me know. If the cottonwood downright clacks I I’ll be eating macouns. When the crickets slow to a stop, and the robins are absent in the lengthening evening, it’s time for vests, maybe a hat, and I ought to remember to put the scraper in the car, because there’s certainly morning frost. The full moons have names that situate one in place in addition to time, but so could every individual crescent or new moon or waning gibbous.