The winter was kind to the day lilies
and goats weed this year. They burst wild
showing off ambitious new roots.
It was less kind to that little hinoki
I transplanted in September. Alas,
reckoning begins. I pluck it from the soil.
Birds flit seeds where they may, freeze lines
rise, fall, encroach, the sun bounces off
this wall, but not that. Accident’s
ever evolving swirl leaves me forgotten.
I pick up my taming, trimming, pruning,
tall tales I impress yearly on my garden.
Why do you think it is necessary
to visit me here, in my place of origin?
Do you think I cannot reach you wherever
you are? Must you believe in talismans?
I admit doubt. I have wandered
all over, as have you, and all I know
is inside me, not here in this cave
or in my sometimes surprising medicines.
Inside is that old mystical thread
connecting us. Then we return to magic?
You say these paintings represent
my mythology. Perhaps. Some of us
dream wild dreams and press them upon
each other; that is inevitable.
All I truly care about is this thread
and you and me talking right now.
———–
A further conversation with my Co-Magnon friend. The title is from William Stafford’s ’Inscribed on a Prayer Wheel and Spun.’
What a perfect set of commandments for writers. I will work on #3 this week.
Thanks, Jamie, for posting!
It came to me in a flash
as I saw your black body
escaping past the marsh,
the others turned toward me,
running too, that you alone
saw away past the mire
perhaps a thing to fear,
perhaps a deeper knowing,
perhaps the future
unraveling like a flower,
or a tornado whipping us under.
I had hoped you knew
what was on the other side.
But of course then you would
have stopped and returned,
knowing now what it was.
So you are not magic,
but like me running blind
into the unmarked field,
into the dark, fretting
whether to fear, slipping
on our own nerves.
———————-
Another for Sandra. A mural by Kerry James Marshall outside a museum caught my eye, and there she was again.
Catch and let go, leaves take the light.
I let them wander into my hand,
praise the breeze that flits them away.
Miracles abound.
Last evening by the fire, light flecked
the walls, throwing shadows, picking
them up, dancing them onto the ceiling.
It is a miracle.
A simple thing, I think, light must be,
but endlessly complex in its activity.
When sun finds itself on earth, it seems
miracles come with it.
———————–
The first line is from William Stafford’s Cro-Magnon (with a phrase from Saint Theresa).
I heard the screen door slam
in my head, not angry, just lazy —
the workaday world suffocates
in the forest, rootless, unable
to press itself on its inhabitants.
Hearing the slow creak of the rusted
spring echo up to higher branches,
mix with the bluejay’s caw,
one might guess early morning,
perhaps dusk. What is important
is not the time, but the in-between,
the truth on both sides, only half.
Rest in the sound of the rusted
spring partly bouncing off the leaves,
the night sky, the morning rush,
the chilled lake breeze if it comes.
Poems from in between 