Chamomile

I meant to tell you something sweet
to draw this conceit
of how a summer-full flower
sunlit and smooth
can still be of use
when cut, dead and dried

You see it started with my hands
the skin folds like old petals
and speckled with brown after all
we can’t stop time except
for hours this afternoon
I watched two boys throw and catch a ball
stand and stretch on that barren strip
of car-lined concrete
arm-whip and stoop and whip again
and my fingers curled with the urge
to let something rip
vigor and fury of muscle better
than pen-scratch, or sit and sip
this insipid tea

corrosion

suppose a life of acquiescence
makes its own chemical reaction
burning sulfur, acid,
oxidizing iron, the heart
that is not a stone
also subject to erosion

to want to obey
when the teacher says be yourself
who is that? a vessel
with fired-on satin-smooth glaze
or one of common clay that must chip and leak
all kinds of noise and emotion?

on having to give up cheese

and butter, of course, though
our great society has long figured out
how to do fake butter

so now I’m left with these questions—
what about goat? how do I mourn
the loss of ice cream and every breakfast casserole

should I go to the garden walk with wine and ____ ?
I suppose there might be crackers

and how could a Texas girl with even great imagination
(I’ve hardly that) fathom these long remaining years
without a single enchilada?

and certainly, why now?
when so much of the joy has already slipped

my hermit days march forward
with stiff arms and fists

response in reverse to Auden’s “A Walk After Dark”

we find our minds turned
to minor categorizing, as of birds
or stars, planets, plants—
though we still would count ourselves young
we discover how set in our ways
and full enough of age

overfull of death and decay
(the broken always with us)
as another crisis enwraps the world—
we want to feel and do more
with no guilt about it
or being called hypocrite by the young

or worse, a Victorian, having passed
beyond the ability to impress them
with our decent, ordered lives—
so I find at dinner nothing
but exhausted, plummeting defeat
more clouds in the forecast

Playing with today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo.net. I used only the first three stanzas of Auden’s poem.

on wanting to share “To Earthward”

a day of sudden hard light:
we’ve grown so tired
watercolor gray, so
with each visible sunbeam
we anticipate snow melting
on the verge, imagine the bee-
house warming and all green
pushing from the other side,
touch to touch, still seeking
wisdom’s communion
but tree-tough, immune
to frost, to blossom

You can read Frost’s “To Earthward” here.

Prairie Burn, ii.

your heart, you think, must
by now be something
like that Hill Country scrub—

even your outside prickly
inside hard and harder
dry white

when? there were years
of next-to-no rain
and still the flowers bloomed

to the guy who still holds the 8th-grade school record for long jump

you’re my age now, I’m thinking
as I wait for the game to start
how we engrave these accomplishments
as if they might matter
thirty-five years hence
do you even know
your name is still on this board
and what does it mean
we hold these selves within us
from a time when such things made us strive
to be important to someone—
to ourselves?

 

this softness

I want to proclaim it
to the man leaning and yapping
at the department store clerk
to the sheath-dressed woman
high heeled, on the phone
choosing bagged lettuce

I want to turn it inside out
spread it like dandelions
or honey or something
in a cooler hue, a green
slow rain, complete release
from striving

Reading Hafiz, “When the Meadows on the Body Turn Gray,” translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

on creating

everything fades in time, you know
how all was black before your birth
and after—you have nothing else to go on
clinging to every look and gesture
winding yourself into being

*

not every spark ends in a sun
transcendent, though
your hand is on the work
indelible

National Poetry Month is ended, but I still have pages in my Yes-Words journal…

Night

You think you can prepare
for sudden loss. The late call
all the what would I do if
and what will I do when…
Much like you pause in the dark doorway
before quick-crossing moonlit floor
launching into bed as if
the monster can’t reach his long hands
snatch your ankles, yank you under
even so