Friendships Bloom
Friendships bloom when no one is watching
Like the dandelions that pop up in the yard
I cry when they get mowed down
Friendships bloom when no one is watching
I wish Emily Dickinson
had married Charles Dickens—
she could have been
Emily Dickinson-Dickens
Perhaps they would have
had a son named Richard—
he could have been
Dick Dickinson-Dickens
I wind through forests, hills, and streams.
A ribbon of nature where hikers dream.
Follow my path and you will find,
views and vistas
that expand your mind.
I stand where paths twist and wind,
with whispers of nature
and secrets to find.
From rocky peaks to shaded glades,
seek me where the sunlight fades.
What am I, in the woods so grand,
where trails and adventure go hand-in-hand?
I dwell in shadows, soft and damp,
with a cap that often takes the champ.
No leaves or flowers, yet I grow.
On the forest floor I often show.
What am I that springs from gloom,
with a spongy head and a stalk to bloom?
In twilights grasp, I softly gleam.
A fleeting light, a ghostly dream.
I dance on fog and marshy ground,
with eerie glow, I can confound.
What am I, a spectral flare,
that flickers and fades,
leaving no trace there?
In the woods I roam
with a growl and a snarl,
you’d better beware;
look closely,
my name’s hidden with ease.
Blackness.
Everywhere.
Appalachian beast.
Running in the forest strong and free.
Malevolent, restless, wandering at night,
lingering, just out of sight.
To keep me at bay, some seek a hue.
I quietly creep with a hunger so vast
it never sleeps.
A spirit of frost and chilling dread.
I haunt the path that lies ahead.
Holding a fearsome glow
that stirs the night
where no wind blows.
The Morning Survey:
drought ends in torrential
We calculated the level of stupor
By the math of his empty beer bottles
His syllabus
A thesis of childhood confusion
Each startling slap
An astronomy of stars
The coarse language once foreign
Wove itself into everyday usage
Reluctant scholars
We majored in a mother’s tears
Quickly discovered
The inner geography of shame
The chemistry of toxic
Explosions
We graduated on our own terms
Leaving for a variety of higher learnings
Dragging our transcripts with us
Like scars of enlightenment
In later life, he turned a quiet savant
Consumed by his rigors of research
Let me be small here
beneath pines and swept blue sky,
catch echoes of bird
song, a rustle and white flash —
the deer’s flagged tail receding.
The shock. Awake at 3:00 AM,
mind roams night like you once roamed
empty streets moon drifting… eerie
surreal shadows of age
Cleaning out the Augean stables
where a thousand immortal cattle were kept—
their dung deep enough to drown in—
was the fifth of the Twelve Labors of Hercules.
The task was to finish the job in a single day,
which seemed impossible until our hero
re-routed two rivers, the Alpheus & the Peneus,
to wash away the muck.
My fridge isn’t quite that bad.
King Augeas never cleaned his stables,
while I tend to business every year or so.
The few cattle in my fridge are very much mortal,
their excretions limited to occasional juices
leaking out of the plastic wrap. Still,
you’d be surprised at how much things
start to pile up:
half-full cartons of sour cream & yogurt
pushed to the back & out of mind,
growing enough mold to invent penicillin
all over again. Petrified lemons & limes
laid to rest in the crisper with atrophied apples,
desiccated carrots, herbs turned to dust.
The last of the miso, mummified
in its Tupperware tomb.
My intentions were good, I swear,
but this is the road I’ve paved. Part of the problem
is my memories of the fridges of my youth,
stocked in the style of Mother Hubbard,
bless her heart. Hedging against hunger,
I keep my shelves packed with the plenty
we lacked back then. Now, like Hercules,
I put my back in it & get to work.
we may delay exercise
with lazy chatter
and sigh with relief
when the session is over
but when called upon
we spring into action
we are galvanized
by a week long
sixteen-text thread
in search of a lost
water bottle with stickers
from the Netherlands
at last revealed
in the studio
closet
