This pumpkin strives (the poem)

This pumpkin strives.
She climbs. She
grapples. Her fruit, more apple
green than the accustomed

pumpkin’s burnt
orange, peeks between
limbs spread wide, not to yawn
but to fly.

Why strive? Why climb, when
the lure of earth sits there so sure
below, its nurturing brown-black,
rumbling with need?

The see-through air dares
her with its sweet, and her cares
are precious but they’re
also very patient.

On the Feast of Stephen

When the wren
senses the sun’s gift,
its enlightened touch
warming a tender brown breast,
he begs neither hand nor pen
to send his blessings

Not enough mouths to say it (my gift to Jill on Christmas)

There are not enough mouths
for me, or me’s on all my parallel paths
to say it
or sing it
or sound out the words that rhyme
to the truth of it

I will, I
do, I’ve
loved you
since we met, since
well-before that, in fact

I will, I
do, I’ve
loved you
since my childish heart could love, since
before I couldn’t speak
with all these superfluous mouths, mouths
unable to give
any true sounds shape,
just these words, sometimes
ringing as hollow as hellos

I will, I
did, I
do love you,
and all these irrelevant mouths
through all the relevant times
and tenses
are unable even now or then
to describe
the multi-dimensional ride
my heart takes
whenever, wherever, however
we meet, coming and going,
growing both forward,
and all around,
and back to the well-before
those sounds

I couldn’t speak.

[Christmas = love, and this is for my love, Jill]

This pumpkin strives. It climbs.

On the Winter Sostice, 2011

We’re on the cusp,

a pin-prick gleam on the lip of a cup,
and we’re running. Over

and over, we’ve held it.

We’ve raised it up,
this golden
cup filled with the sacrifice
of time, time and time again,
until its weight gets too much,
or our arms too fat to hold it. Much longer,

and longer than that, the shadows go,
and they’ll continue to grow now. Our fancy cup’s
at the tipping, with its time spilling out
twenty-four hours
a day into the forest of roots

loosing their grip on the slime-drenched
soil. Little Juramaia once played here,
and Gaia hasn’t forgotten her. Could she

forget us, or the trees? She can’t

feel the hoar frost for the trees,
or us, when it’s gone,
and the trees have gone tipsy
at the thought. That,

and this lengthening light.

Not enough mouths to say it

The rest is leaving me

Are you responsible for it
what you do in dreams My dreams
may be
telling me

There’s no need to yell He’s right
there in front of me He’s right
there

The okapi, Okapia
johnstoni, is a giraffid
artiodactyl mammal
native to the Ituri
Rainforest in Central
Africa

I feed my head lots of facts A little
fiction They tamp down
others that are
older The others
that are less
comforting

Sirius is the brightest
star in the night sky It is
almost twice as bright
as Canopus The name
is derived from the Ancient
Greek for "glowing" or
“scorcher”

I remember yelling I can’t
remember what
I yelled or
if he wore glasses I do
remember a room
and the flimsy pale
blue Frailty The rest is leaving
me

I was freezing
and walked on following
that track in my dreams, longing
too for that
doorway to
an enchanted theater,
which was for madmen only

Are you responsible for it
what you did when young I was young
when I yelled He was there
He was still there Still there
right in front of me

It's the trees that listen

The murder hadn’t heard
her not-words
murmured in delight.
The trees did despite
the flapping,
darkly beaten wings
filtered through a leafless light.

One day, a cat

One jet scars the night.
One feather leaves it a kiss.
One morning comes, gray whiskered,
to lap away the miss.

The softening sadness of a softer rain

Here’s the pretty picture of her
unfamiliar wall: there’s a prettier
window where soldiering trees line up
to have their familiar tops and bottoms cut,
and their bare black branches removed
just as they reach into a settling blue.
Its painter didn’t remember to paint it in,
the softening sadness of a softer rain.
Wet drips, and it drips us invisibly
drowsing to a picture of soldiering trees.

Expanse

I know
but can’t believe it. I can’t
feel it, not all of it. It’s too big,
and yet, it’s getting bigger.

Such a small child,
my small thumb and smaller
fingertip meeting to pluck it
out from a there, where it’s not
blinking, not really even twinkling,
but lightly being both
there and a part of me.

How could it ever not be
there when that there comes
back, black and white, but
a little bit different,
a little more removed
the next day, and again
every day after?

Obscura

Time is relative
it’s akin, and akimbo
to the quality of our failing
light, as the camera draws near, then
it pulls back from fading stars
and into grasping shadow.

Thanks to Jill, who planted the seed for this.