Series: Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Here is the season of growing, so you are digging
somewhere in a garden, your hands turning warm

soil and putting in seed. Even those without a yard
can put up wooden boxes on their back decks

and pour sackfuls of rich brown earth. Such neat
rows, each headed by a tiny plastic triangle listing

how much water, how much shade; naming
what comes out of the harvest moons later—

heirloom tomatoes, stoplights of bell peppers,
cinnamon basil, sweet bee balm. My mother never

planned too hard about what things should grow,
or where— after chopping vegetables for stew,

she threw the seeds that clung to her hands
past the kitchen door, and months later we’d see

her thrift multiplied among the zinnias and
nasturtiums, latticed across pearled gravel.

I think of these tiny patches of almost wilderness
as a breeze stirs the tulip tree from top to bottom

and my heart picks its way among detritus of fallen
blossoms, their deep pink underbellies and the four-

fingered green of leaves like hands smoothed
open, ready to catch what might fall from the sky.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

On the common fleabane, the leaves
clasp their stems and the spiraled
white lashes close on their one
yellow eye for the night. What
does it see, peeking through
the fringed curtains?

*

In his Flora Suecia, Carl Linnaeus
wrote of a Russian soldier
cured of dysentery by fleabane
decoction. Burn the plant,
hoary head and all, and be rid
of fleas, insects, and other itches.

*

The night-blooming cereus
spreads its ivory skirts to reveal
its corded saffron petticoat.
For a few hours of such
intense fragrance, what
would you not unravel?

*

Legends describe a soup
prepared from entire flowers,
and fed to warriors and lovers
with thinning breath. In other tales,
the flowers are called Job’s Tears.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dear patience, crown of flowers whose root
is the same suffering we give the name
of love— We learn that the afternoon’s
passing storms, broody with thunder and
petulant with hail, have ripped the night

heron’s nest from the trees, and flung
its young upon the cobblestones. None
have survived. Is it to make amends
that the first irises open in the dark,
confessing the wounds on their tongues?

Red and yellow, stained crests of violet—
here is how the heart’s delivered from
one injury to another. Our limbs thrash
in sleep, swimming toward the promise
of an island of repose. Come, wind

with your interchangeable songs of virtue
and endurance— Come any way through
the windows; cool these overheated rooms.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Delicacy: The faintest tinge of flavor, the way
I know what words can make you blush.

Mostly for their smell, last summer I planted
verbena between the mint and roses.

The weeds look almost tipped with silver
and the moon is a penny, coppered thin.

I sit in the window bay waiting for the heat
to dwindle, to sweeten in the clover.

Do you know why the green herbs stitch
their tiny shadows on the sill?

After the storm last night, all the lights
went out, down the length of the street.

Warm amber, warm musk, sweet
hook: your scent in the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

A change of linens, pillows plumped and
mattresses flipped over, spritz of mist

smelling of warm cloves and milk— then finally
I might fall asleep. Sometimes, deep in the night

it rains; and in the morning I find it hasn’t been
a dream. Tarot waiting to be read on a wet

driveway— random lilac, red maple; sharp
green spades that cradled gardenias: what

do they know of warnings and misfortune?
Leaf of the cherry, red heart, organ of fire:

I name you as if I could thread your bones;
I name you not knowing your mystery.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.” ~ Robert Schumann

Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus 1758)

Little herald of the soul, more sedate
than the hummingbird who comes
in search of sugar, who flashes in and out
of the emerald leaves to drink
nectar from the throats of flowers—
you circle the porch and yard three times
before coming to rest behind my chair.
At first, I think your name has come
from the same springs as reverie,
that wistful song spun from childhood.
And it could very well be, though your
bistre cloak, sooty umber edged
with blue or white, lies open like the covers
of a book of reckoning. The chimes
clink half-finished tunes in the garden
and I hold my hand over my heart
because I know it knows no rest:
it does not want to mourn what
passes from this life, just yet.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Someone— who?— years ago
traced the lines on my palm to read

by candle-glow what the crossways meant,
the breaks, faint spiderwebbing wrapped

around the edges of my hand to say
how many children I would have,

how many loves, how many times
the heart would bend to the swallowtail’s

random dance. What coins changed
hands, what turn of fortune spilled

its fickle evidence of numbers
on the table? Some years are silken

threads that loosen quickly from flimsy
moorings; some years are patient

caterpillars inching up the rough-barked,
bunioned trees— Any day now a god

might unfurl its wings to rend the canopy;
any day now, that radiant and elusive life.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Some days I am nothing
but a hand clumsy at Braille,
feeling for eyelets as I fumble
for the laces of shoes in the dark,
for all the loose ends and bones
of my dislocated selves. A sparrow
chips away somewhere, dutiful
at the task of widening its own
corner of morning. I hear it and
want nothing more than a handful
of seed to bring it home.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Some days, I dream a snatch of a poem
standing on a rocky cliff, waiting to rebuff

a tsunami. Only a little phrase, language
rubbed with the odor of the sea, a spray of oil,

a veil of orange. For now, everything is warm:
too warm, too still, too soft from lying in the sun

with its mouth open, waiting for what brings
the coolness of water. The bird on a twig

with its breast rouged red is a prayer.
The bird is a question, or the bird

is an answer; or the bird is a letter.
It flies away. There’s always change.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Thanks too, to Risa Denenberg for her piece today.