Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The Dance of Sisters (from the journal)




  

Pink fire on the sharon.
Bee feast.  7-2-13



As quiet as a cricket,
baby redbird speaks, quivers
in the crab apple.
Two busy parents.  7-2-13



The gray air moving
through dry leaves is caught
in sharon’s rosy trumpets.  7-4-13



Too hot to breathe.
Cicadas manage,
one or two.  7-6-13



From the far tulip tree—
summer shakers
fill the warm morning.  7-7-13



Hands down
sassafras’ other self 
helps  herself  to myrtle’s
light and shade.  7-7-13 
  


Lightened and darkened
by last night’s rain,
wood garden warming up.  7-8-13



The ring of pink is complete.
Baby lady redbird
takes her rosy seat.  7-8-13



Folded up like umbrellas,
yesterday’s sharons are
purple whorls meditating
on tomorrow’s seeds.  7-10-13



You only think you know it
until you come out and
sit in it, breathe, feel the air,   
hear blue jay’s noisy call.  7-11-13



An edge to it, it has,
this morning full of
of gray catbirds
talking in the gray air.  7-13-13



That wonderful sound
comes from only one thing—
redbird’s fluttering wings.  7-13-13



Sharon’s lavender cigars
litter the rose colored
flagstones.  7-13-13



Taking the uptake
of summer—
one cicada,
two.  7-18-13



The juniper crater is empty.
Last year it was full to the brim
with pokeweed.  7-21-13



Paler now, wood poppy,
as summer wanes.  7-21-13



Fish crow is telling knock-
knock jokes.
All the catbirds are laughing.  7-21-13



In her web off the blue bubble jug,
the only thing spider has captured
is a withered myrtle leaf.  7-22-13



Waiting for a poem
is better than writing a poem.
Anything can happen in a spot
of telescoped time.  9-23-13



Black and yellow wings open
in a spot that should have
sun this morning.
Swallowtail.  7-24-13



Here and there
shaking summer off,
paced cicadas,
taking it up.  7-27-13



Holding her own in the wind,
swallowtail over the open sharon.  7-27-13



Old Letters (for Rudolf Kiesslinger)

Reading Rudi’s old letters.
He copied my poem and sent it back to me:

            The human face of God
             is nothing to depend on.

             A crow, a stone, the
             touch of silence in the forest—
             these are the anchors.

“We are of one mind,” he writes,
his voice still real after all these years,
“I am myself a revelation.”  7-28-13



The dance of sisters—
karate kicks that don’t connect.
Only one piece of pink chalk
at the playground.  7-31-13