First Morning
The sun breaks
Its red yolk
Across the sky
Feathered silhouettes
Wildly dance
Their swoop and chirp
You roll toward me
Touch my cheek
Set fire to the world
The sun breaks
Its red yolk
Across the sky
Feathered silhouettes
Wildly dance
Their swoop and chirp
You roll toward me
Touch my cheek
Set fire to the world
I
Out of all of them, this time,
what decides the best of a group
is a word.
II
Your name is a word I use
to call you out.
It is nothing more
than everything.
III
A word is made by
joining letters together;
ink making lines that contrast with
what lies underneath.
IV
To pick a word is
to discard all others.
This is a lie.
V
By myself,
I was surrounded by many words.
I was not alone.
VI
The word is not right
nor wrong. It is and
is to be shared.
VII
I put these,
my words, out there in an order,
in the hope that you understand them
in your words.
VIII
We gather to select our words,
one by one,
like dandelions
for boquets to be consumed by fire.
Don’t take crawling for granted:
the belly knows determination.
We want most what we don’t have –
enough to stand, to teeter,
to raise a fist like a scream
scraped from an empty bowl,
inarticulate power and attention.
He’s learned to walk
by liking and lacking;
there are no other reasons to strive.
“this is a poem,”
i told her as we bobbed along
with our heads just barely above
the windswept surface of the lake
and the storm lurching closer
across the hills and the hollers.
“i can smell the dirt in the water
and the water in the air,”
she marveled.
“and it just ain’t the same up there.”
we breathed deep and laughed over snakes and slime and sharp shale
and watched the steam rise
and the rain roll in.
“this is a poem,”
i said.
“but i can’t figure out
how to compare WASPS
and waspers.”
Carby slop in a cereal bowl
charms the spark
out of a socket
that might otherwise
leave me with
a crepitus bone
a fascist peanut
a rusty old bolt.
But witness
your stretch stacked
inch by inch
under a linen shirt,
I’m playing pickleball
by noon and
risking squash
I never purchased.
i started my garden late this year
i might not have known just how late
if facebook hadn’t reminded me
with its feature of “memories”
that showed how much had grown by this time
in years past (or passed?)
(insert sad face).
i blame the weather
which was unpredictable and stayed cold too long
and then rained forever
(insert angry face)
i stare at the spots where i know i’ve planted
as if i had a superpower …
TheHarderIStareTheFasterItWillGrow
(insert LOL face)
I’m nervous to share
The memories I store
Hidden beneath self-doubt
What would it take to expose my shame
When you don’t even know my name
Born one of many
where many had nothing
Anything was much
and such
was truth
for more than a few
But that one in the bunch
has given his best
showed up more
times than less
lives what matters most
and such
should be truth for us
all.
