Daffodil
Daffodil, Daffodil
You are strong and you are beautiful
The first flower in spring
Standing tall
We welcome you with open arms
You lead the colorful flower parade
Yellow trumpets sound the alarm
Spring is here! Spring is here!
Some people are dog people.
Others are cat people.
I suppose I go both ways.
Is that “unnatural”?
in April, as drops from the sky,
as roots in the loam, as cloud,
as marsh ferns’ lacy arrows,
open greenly
unfold in July with the cranberry
hibiscus bowl-petals singing
with sweeping tongue, yellow-
anthered
uncurl in October, like coneflower
fingers, like oak’s hold on its leaves,
like rain-slick pavement
bronzed
unwind with January’s white hills,
each a still life holding its breath,
holding moles & mice in its
subnivean embrace—
stretch silently into spring’s sly
verduous wink, its rumpled
fields, its shaggy blossoms,
savor flagrantly
I have been walking
almost every day
in a effort to be healthier
I take the same path
and sometimes see
neighbors outside their homes
Or children playing
in their yards
with laughter ringing
However, as I walk at a
fairly quick pace,
there isn’t much time to visit
Unless I see my new friend
come trotting up with
a friendly “meow”
She rubs against my leg
and meows a request
for an ear rub
She will visit as long as
I will stay with her
and is always glad to see me
I find myself with a new
eagerness to take my walk
and visit my feline friend
The beach house stands a good hundred meters from the water
and we’re supposed to have one more day of vacation
but the ocean’s waves are knocking on our deck supports;
Hurricane Danny
is falling on Dauphin Island.
Mom rouses kids at six in the morning.
Quick!
Pack your things, we have to go.
We don’t question.
We knew this was coming.
The submerged beach sobers us
before a single bowl of cereal breakfast
while adults run through their checklists.
Two uncles are out on a different mission:
What is
the condition of
the bridge
linking us
to the mainland?
Weather reports had been background noise all week
as the monster was tracked and studied
for strength and speed. How long
until it would be striking at the shores?
Conversations were had.
What happens if…?
What happens if…?
As children, we understand the urgency;
no cry or complaint is raised
while the cars are efficiently stuffed with our things.
Uncles return.
The bridge
is in good condition
but we cannot wait
any longer.
Roiling waves below offer only a hint of the inbound chaos
as our caravan joins the rush of vacating vacationers.
We stop briefly on the mainland to fill up our gas tanks
before embarking on our final escape to home.
For years after, we could go back to family home videos
to watch clips of that 1997 vacation.
One segment has always stayed with me.
My dad, in the dead of night
aims the camera at the blackened ocean
where only the lights from oil rigs twinkle
like stars crashing into the earth.
The storm is out there, he says.
It’s coming right toward us.
Danny would be the only hurricane to hit the United States that year
dropping 32.52 inches of rain in a 24-hour period on Dauphin Island,
a record yet to be broken. Across four states
it was involved in nine fatalities.
Now almost thirty years later, I find myself revisiting the memory
after weathering maelstroms of people to varying degrees of success.
I wonder how we would have fared if we weren’t prepared.
What was it like for the adults awaking to the storm on our beachstep?
Had one of them been up, like my father in the video, keeping watch?
I just followed orders as a kid. What if I had to be giving the orders?
But most of all, my mind swirls around a lesson
best taught by Mother Nature herself: the call to evacuate.
Our story never had a ‘fight-or-‘ before our flight,
a truth hardly contained to violent skies.
I receive this gift from my younger, observant self
about the care that must be given to choosing your battles
because some people just aren’t worth the nightmare.
Their minds will not change,
they will not love you back,
and you as well as I will be better off
seeking shelter elsewhere.
I didn’t have tax fraud ending
a friendship on my bingo card.
Could you just call I-75 instead?
That would complete my line
and I could follow it to your house,
or god forbid you follow it to mine.
I’ve got rosemary growing in the back
to make the gin go down smooth.
I know you’ve already got one going.
Then you could tell me how you got caught
and I can tell you how not to get caught
y’know, in the future.
A deaf woman’s broken plate
she fed my kitty on while I was gone
Came home to find her
Napping in the ac
She couldn’t afford
Cigarette burn taken back,
Sucked into the violin
My old cell phone,
attached to my hand for years
this new one’s like a tree trunk
my hands stuck
pressed down under it
Heirloom-
what I took when you died
what I wish for you to love
If you were a robin you could
swallow a dried worm
the entire length of your chassis
following it up quickly with a giant fat grub
but too slow,
it’s now in possession
of the sparrow’s mate
no way it’s getting stuffed into
a head that shares it’s girth-
a fardel larger than a bodkin
-she’s not a snake!
I dreamed of Ingrid in the pocket park
woke to a monstrous blue heat
with dry rose pastels
rubbed into it,
no that’s the glare from the street
Phones are too big for our hands these days
It’s basically an iPad
Will I carry it less in my hand
or will my hands get aches
from gripping their girths?
This 80 degrees is tinged
by a shady cool otherwise
I want to run after that girl…
“Where’d you find this dress?”
I’ve learned at times,
not to be a lunatic, and have a bit
more reserve with strangers
at times
The insides of my home, black
as that flowing linen
for maybe a whole minute
gradually taking on colors
an internal sunrise
As the fog of the morning
Bleeds into the night
I can’t seem recognize
Or differentiate the light.
Heavy
Always the word I find
Empty
The other word I combine
The fog hovers over my mind
The moments within reach,
Now distant Mountains to climb
He. Was. Just. Right. Here…
And she still is… yes. She still is.
But oddly, I’m similarly disconnected
To what was and what is,
As if the pain’s gone septic
Taking on what once was his.
I dreamed I ran to you (Oh I’m talking to you now)
And hugged you so tight.
I noticed your hands were blue,
But we smiled, in our circle of light
Woke up again, gasping
Pouring sweat against the sheets
Pleading for “one last thing”
But against God I can’t compete…
Day fog, suffocates,
The never ending expectations,
To keep pushing through grief gates
No matter the implications
Because “we all go through it”
Get up. Move on.
Even as
The heavy mind still plays tricks,
Density of the fog carries my tears,
Proof
You’re
Gone
