LATEST POSTS
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Geraniums (revised, again)
It begins with the scent of geraniums,
bitter and hard,
and my grandmother telling me not to touch
because she is afraid I will pick them.
I wonder how this flower
so harsh on my nose
could be the crown of her patio.It begins with the scent of geraniums,
bitter and metallic,
and the old man at the end of the street
wading through his dark, wide garden,
thick, soil-soaked air,
and a wild assortment of snapdragons
which we each pick
so we can make the dragon growl.
He bends over the fence
to hand us our annual maple saplings.It begins with the scent of geraniums,
bitter and ancient,
and me potting up the front entryway,
the sun burning my arms, my eyes squinting.
That sharp perfume,
its mystical remembrances,
is welcome oracle
of the season yet to know.————
My annual return to this poem (with revisions) is triggered by planting geraniums yet again in my front door planters. I try hard to break from tradition, but become nostalgic at one whiff of geraniums. I am forever stuck in the gardens of my youth.
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Birds work all through the night
I don’t know what they do
this time of night.
I just hear them squawking.
And they sound a little bent out of shape.They chatter with one another,
voices strained but constant —
New parents whisper loud
through the nursery walltrying to get their baby down,
exhausted, having lost all sense
of night and day,
though their tired chatter goes on.I imagine if they stop
they will tip off the tree branch —
not that I have true reason
to suppose they will.It is just my own exhaustion
that I hear in their voices —
and how it is so easy to tip and fall
long into the night. -
Day 30
you would think
when walking through woods at night
that we’d stumble —
but instead we learn to find
a steady foot, our own light -
Day 29
walking through woods
in bare moonlight – shade over shade,
black within black –
I see what cannot be seen in day
ask what can be seen of me -
Day 28: And the greatest of these
is love —
which is not really fair to say,
for the three
intertwine when you sit here, ready,
and build atop each other -
Day 27
a night walk
is never simple –
shafts of gray light
peel back tree bark and find squirrels
opining through long hours
Poems from in between 