Posts for June 4, 2021 (page 12)

1.

The strongest part of the storm passed by
earlier, taking the clustered pollen
from the old oak tree in the yard.

2.

I ask myself to be honest all day long,
and, if I’m being truthful,
the honesty is not my strength.

I slide into fiction
with the same flat-footed ease
a duck slides into water. 

3.

Lies textured smooth like silk ribbon
on a neatly-wrapped gift. Lies grown tired
of themselves, lies like messy packages.

I could no longer keep up
with the untruths and the falsehoods.

4.

Rain hit the roof in pleasant tinny pellets. 
This is true. For years, however, I lied
about my age in order to appear older.

I lied to keep the peace and to prevent
worry, to preserve myself,
and I’ve lied for the fun of it.

5.

I am as honest and tired now
as the mule my neighbors owned
when I was on the farm, storytelling. 

6. 

If I was lying, I wouldn’t tell.
I’d just follow the noise
of the rain into the dark. 

on horse-
       back

          for 
          few
            and
important 
     rounds

ringing 
    true.

my own   
singular and adamant    leading me
to the door I have kept closed    too long
my shaking hand    rotates the knob
                 and pushes    hard

no giant gust    of fresh air    no
blast    of bright sun    greets me
just a terrifying

              o p e n n e s s

my pulse    is a bullhorn    shouting in my ear
behind me    doubt    whispers and waits

I feel skin stretch    break open    and
              my invisible self
                                             steps out
                                    

Spiny succulent
yellow sun fruit-
shading a short cave  

where desert rodents
burrowed with crisped seedcorn
& shredded bits of hide and cloth.  

“Tree-cholla” you told me.
“Cold-weather hardy” you said.
“Pocket mouse” you noted.  

I don’t miss you.
But I miss where we’ve been.

The deep roar of heavy wheels breaks through
My pleasant perusals and poetic musings.

Recalling an alert ignored in evening rain and repose,
A fresh alarm jars me to early-morning action.

I skitter throughout the house gathering,
Open the door, scramble bare feet on concrete,

Nose slapped by nauseating stench as I empty the porch can
And thud it into a behemoth red belly.

Toes licked by tickling tongues of wet grass,
I hurry to the road towing an awkward load,

Then awaken the dog’s loud disapproval
By shouting my winded gratitude to the sanitation worker I barely outran.

Only a few miles away,
horseshoe-shaped middens
form a protective school
for Royal Doulton Ladies.
Double-sail boat cats
settle on lost linguistics;
their backstamp bottoms-up.

Right before you leave
is when it’s worst, when I see
you’re already gone. 

Creatures of a species
of another place’s
origin

Ride the rails
or hitch a ship
or sleep inside
the package,
delivered by tide,

then scampering free,
observe the world
with false hospitality,
eating their way
into our wreckage

To a Redbud in Bighill, Kentucky

Six decades of distracted searching — that rush
to snag the exclusive, meet the deadline,
grab the bargain, boost the credit — & finally now
I notice you.  Look, I’ve moved

to the mountain & I’m doing crazy
things —  talking back
to whip-poor-wills, transcribing 
for the cicada. Right now,  I’m under

your heart shaped leaves perched
like a monk, expectant & eager. O tree
of the edges, tree of the understory,
to you I yield.  Never once before 

have I noticed your whoosh & tingle,
your twisted trunk & I wasn’t expecting your
toughness. I try to break a slender
branch & can’t. I sit

beside you on the slope until
sunset & as your red
brown twigs stretch
like capillaries into the body

of the sky I surrender
even more. Forgive me
I’ve been lost in an American
daze & thank you

for waiting for me.  Now, tree
of the tribes, I am
your student. I imagine your ancient
memories whistling forth

in song. A Shawnee mother boils
your tough bark to soothe the whooping
cough of her newborn. She drives
winter out with your boughs, uses every

crackly seed. Take the scraps
of me, the tree sings, thread
my limber branches into baskets
with star patterns & handles.

The cicadas & Chariot card have aligned—
both the light horse & dark horse with sweat & taut reins—
so that what will now be will be what we will find.

With the summer arising, the spring left behind,
& the world falling parallel perfect in lanes,
the cicadas’ & Chariot’s refrain in our minds,

hear the hoofsbeat, the thorax-thrum, droning, defined,
like the march of these years & the arch of these veins—
so that what we’re becoming will be what we’ll find.

Feel the ground as it trembles with tymbal’d design,
zephyr winds from your west shaping eastern terrain
til cicadas & Chariots & tethers entwine.

Let the banners of Past & Regret that maligned
be here rent by the ritual of richer campaign
so the Then will be Then & the Now what we find!

If there’s Time, if there’s Truth, if there’s Love unconfined,
then there’s rhyme to these rhythms the world can’t restrain,
so that even cicadas & Chariots align
with the Hope that we’ll be what we always would find.