Bouquet

 

 

Bouquet 

 

Earlier, before day, before day was made

day, I raised the shade to arrange

the bouquet of the birds’ of prey

feathers.  Alert in an barren bonsai

 

pot they reach easily east & to east’s

opposite.  & the smaller feathers barely scale

the rim.  I’ll confess I don’t know all

their names, but some, of course: crow;

 

broad tail hawk; turkey.  Eagle.  & the one

lone white, from my daughter’s costume

when she was an attending pre-K

angel at Jesus’ manger.  I thought: alive,

 

all these birds are solitary.  I thought: loosing

to lose one feather of the thousands they fly

with, this one isn’t going to be

missed, though if it still

 

had a consciousness it might miss: the wind,

the beak preening, the fanning out, fanning

in, the light, the coming on of dark

when the shade is after being

 

raised all day slowly drawn down

to the tips of the shaft and vane waiting maybe

for a February draught to resurrect the barbs

where some are split, where some were dried

 

wet & caked yet, & some, the angel one flanked

by all the rest, hide behind the falcon

                                                   & the count them:

one,  two, three

 

                                                   crow

Then She Said

 

Then She Said

“I have found favor in your sight, my lord,

for you have comforted me and indeed

have spoken kindly to your maidservant,

though I am not like one of your maidservants.”

                       

                        Ruth 2:13

such a meticulous glean

            the bee to her need

            her proboscis and the pollen powder

                                   

rising

            while inside the hollow

            halls of her body

            the soft offering she is

            withdrawing from the face

            of the echinacea begins

            its steady friendship

            quiet

            reliable

Relationships

 Relationships

            for Ishrat on her birthday –

 

Such comfort in the bee

who between the florets & petals

is seeking her sweet

gauzy drop of almost

honey.  Like she was

homed here.  Like the face of the sun

flower opened for just this

moment and the bee,

this bee,

heavy from her last

home – oh those pouches

of pollen – twin purses –

& isn’t the richness all the more

enjoyable because of the leaving

(the risk of wind and being

blown off course finally survived)

the pollen rising / \ falling

                       

                          \ /

                        rising

                        falling

in something like applause

Pain-Gleaned

 Pain-gleaned

 

Pain-gleaned but there’s always a nerve

hiding behind the silence where quiet is

 

a hunted laboring mother giving in at last

then slipping to the same world her still-

 

born baby has slipt to.  Moving forward

she sleeps & the piece

 

                                    of her who made

the baby & brought it to term only

 

to have to paw through the gaul of the after

birth searching for the stone

 

that was thrown at her glass castle

finds nothing but immensity nothing

 

but layers & layers of drapes of immensity

which being the seamstress she now is

 

she stitches together to hang

pleated & neat in the house she lives in

 

now at glow in the dark but a glow nobody

being outside that dark could ever imagine being

 

illuminated 

Imagine: In the Yellow House, Arles

 

Imagine: In the Yellow House, Arles

 

Yesterday’s replica was of Van Gogh’s

Arles bedroom.  The cups.  The rumpled

red bed-

            covering the almost

                        floating above angle the viewer

                        needs to appreciate

                        standing to see

                                    it all falling some-

                                    how down

            hill.  (it seems the bedroom

                        wasn’t plumb, he’d said

                        in a letter to Theo)

 

                                    but to see it

                                    the way Vincent saw

 

to paint it perspectively

            waiting for people

            to sit to sleep against the edge

            of the wall, the straw sun

            hat hung behind the head

            board next to the frumpy paint clustered

            frocks but oh the room is so…

 

                                    See?!

                        RED! & BLUE & LIVINGLY

                                    neat!

 

unrumpled cover.  In the painting

there’s room for two:

 

            two chairs

            two pillows

            two then two paintings & one

                        where two might

                                    walk, grasping each other, through to the trees.

 

 

While Ironing,

 

While Ironing,

 

a line of reckoning.

Her precision in linen

in dishcloth lap napkin

summer cotton

 

shirt cuffs & the yoke

across the shoulder

was a navigator’s

satisfaction, a Jesus-like

 

geometry, grit from licked

thumb, akin to the pinch

of water’s flung

benediction she’d knotted

 

before she was done

bringing it all in almost dry

from the line, making it

yield to her and her hot

 

iron.  It was nearly

a sacrilege to let fly

this napkin white as peace

doves to wipe my vinegar & oil

 

dripping lips, but oh!

to press it there was

a clemency I didn’t know

I needed until right then

 

and my when cut lips felt

her linen balm and they stilled,

then they parted then barely spoke,

and only: oh! oh!    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes, December

 

folded

Notes, December

 

now the shadows are

lengthening over the snow.

November closes.

 

1:

 

clung like rot, a stump

whose roots underground

may yet

 

pulse ~

who would know though

owing to the snow-

 

hold & so early

in the season,

or late, depending on

 

your point

of view.  see, we’ve

three weeks remaining

 

of autumn. there’s 

so much I’d needed

to tend to before it all

 

came to this

slow focused letting go:

the bronzing

 

of ice beneath a night

of light white dust

the sunrise sites

 

while rising behind

the overcast sky,

in the low, no visible

 

wind.  see: the same

curled maple leaf

from a week ago is still

 

by the buddha's toe, its body

caught in the thin scrim,

half above the solid stone