Posts for June 15, 2022 (page 10)

         both hands holding
         four pairs of feet-
         flat leather on the ground

         bone bent pieces
         of chiseled stone
somehow- some balance found.

six years old for a moment
eyes peeled back by the moon shine smiling through my window
that strawberry blossom hung by a string dangling
at the end of God’s fingertips teasing
tickling my eyelids
i’m keeping my feet from the ground for one more minute
linger.
*Thomas Merton from A Year with Thomas Merton, June 15 I am deeply moved by the meaning of this strange life

My mouth is full of spit and malapropisms
like “You could have hit me with a fender”
and “Having one wife is called monotony”
and I shake my head at some of what my tongue has done
like licking a coat of lacquer or wearing a coat of liquor
and when my head shakes my tongue shakes inside of it
and my teeth rot away like an old fence
and old fences make old neighbors
as a poet almost said, his words like butterflies
I caught in the net I call my ears which didn’t
recognize the efforts of my own tongue
silenced as I stood in lines in school hallways
bitten bloody as a bully dared me to say just
what I thought when what I thought was
I wonder who gave this guy a badge and thus
my tongue got trained my tongue managed
to become a three-piece suit which come to think of it
may be what people mean by tongue-tied I don’t know
but holding a job often meant holding my tongue
which inspired my breath to float so far away
I thought I’d never catch it so no wonder the words
don’t come when I need them or come out wrong

this moon
and foxglove rain
a proxy
for
your silhouette
in the reeds
as spring
relents
to summer

We stole the fresh spring roses for our mother
when the Highland Farmer’s Market was closing,
and there was a rush to leave as rain fell 

upon the crowd. The thorns weren’t trimmed, 
and I cut myself cramming a dozen flowers 
in my satchel to make a proper table setting

knowing if I hadn’t tried, it wouldn’t have looked 
so fine. I thought of her smiling, secretly wishing 
they were carnations, but these stolen blooms

so blazed of red at dinner, she beamed with pride, 
for her sons had spent the last of the lunch money 
on her!

Fossil Find
    Interstate 5, Lost Hills, CA

Southbound, surrounded 
by exotic bires far from water —
     red-naped, purple-
     headed, green-backed

plunging their identical
curved beaks earthward,
     pecking
     probing

ceaselessly for some
viscous substance not
     visible for mere
     mankind

its barreled
value
     calculable
     negotiable

ferric pterodactyls
rusting in place until
     they crumble
     beneath

an embered sun.

I’m froze..

packed tightly I suppose,
from foot prints on snow 

some stand idly and then go, others stomp mightily in a woe

I’m trapped by the tyranny they bestow

I become hardened and cold,
snow packed on steel
everything darkened behold,
a box with a tight seal

I’m losing my imagination, I’m losing my self control
rolling in frustration down a mountain so

but Ice, then wind
I’m into meditating again
I grab a branch so thin 
for a frosty burn on my skin

it’s time to rest and put the day away 
the thought of climbings been chased far astray 
I set my limbs to be frozen in place 
and drift away into an altered space

a dreamier winter in December to embrace

feeling a sense of calm, as the sky bombs purple onto snow
looking out the window to a circle with a glow,
a horizon I look at often so
where will it take me? where will I go?
all the tall pines only know the signs a dying sun shows 
all lonely and low I comply and let go
I follow the snow that glows on a future spring meadow