Posts for June 11, 2015

Hawk
Eagle
Falcon
Robin
Raven
Arch Angel
Pelican
Pterodactyl
Vulture
Edgar Allan Poe
Chicken
Phoenix
Owl
Flamingo
Myself

You asked me if I’ll miss you

You’re not going to be around anymore!
It’s gonna be
so weird.

You’re so beautiful,
Thunderthighs.
Do you know how beautiful you are?
They don’t make them like you anymore.
You’re so special.
Where’d you get these CALVES,
HUH?
I can’t believe these are yours.
I realized the other day that
you have a really big ass.
Like at first it’s not that noticeable but
now I can always tell.
Bubblebutt.
Bbbubblebubble Bubblebutt.
You’re pretty thick for a white girl.
Man, every time I see you I just wanna
pinch them cheeks.
Do people just tell you that you’re beautiful?
Do they just come up to you
in the street
and tell you?
You’re just so different from
other girls.
Is there a waiting list by the way?
for when you’re not with…
Whatshisface
anymore.
Cause I’m putting my name down.
I wanna be
first
on that list.

Man, it’s gonna be so weird!
You not being here.
You gonna miss me?

Poem 11, June 11

Lynn Phillips

I have lived in the present

Lynn told me

as I installed an air conditioner

in the window of his mobile home

as he lay dying on his bed

while I worked outside,

looking in.

I have smelled the scent

of my mother’s red rose he told me

by her door before the inquisitor

came & asked her to go home.

When she went to be forever dead,

I dug it up & I cried.

I became a politician.

I learned never to repent

for past indiscretions. You see,

just like that air conditioner,

I influenced people, some

many I gave bread.

I’m about to go out with the tide

& I beg you to keep the tradition.

 Tend to Mother’s rose when I am gone.

The trees have forgotten summer,
have drawn up slim and dark
against the morning’s gray cold,
like the woman standing by the man. 

The canvas bag at their feet
shows black beneath the dust.
It holds everything but the clothes
they’ve worn since yesterday;
her purse, its emptiness punctuated
by handkerchief and hairbrush;
and the cigarettes and matches
a stranger gave him last night. 

They are husband and wife, or lovers.
They are childhood sweethearts
become best friends against adversity.
Or supplicants, praying for tomorrow. 

The road behind them curls
like a river taking the easy way,
not really caring where it goes
as long as it’s someplace else.

Midnight Butterfly
cruising in her flame green car
picking up angels
and poets in the dark – thier
thumbs out on the open road
I hitch along for the ride

Wind through the pines in Wellfleet suggests Merwin’s Hawaii.
A double row of cypresses recalls my grandparents’ farm in Italy.
Lilacs bring back Sunday visits to the Arnold Arboretum.
My parents planted dozens of rhododendrons on the Cape:
those named for our kids received special attention.

At Lexington Cemetery, we visit the ancient basswood.
We pay our respects to the hollow catalpa at Henry Clay Estate
and greet the ash along Fairway Drive.
We admire the Kentucky coffee trees at McConnell Springs.

Although our ash trees are victims of the emerald ash borer
Dave Leonard provides a legacy of bur oaks
and Larry Johnson encourages a canopy of trees to shield our modest yard.

But will the swamp oak, the white oak, the honey locust, the Japanese red maple,
the wild cherry, the pink dogwoods, and the hardy ginkgo—
the last said to predate the dinosaurs—live to see the 22nd century?