Series: Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

Unfixed from inside a whorl of petals,
the rain-drenched eye of each blossom.

Large as the state of Texas, gestures
the weatherman. The hurricane’s blossom

of jagged exclamations whips across the Bahamas.
Each tree’s reduced to a trembling blossom.

First the fires, then the earthquake, then
promise of torrential rain. All things blossom

in their own time. The evening primrose
leaves turn barn-red. Omen or blossom?

Everyone’s panic-buying. Water and dry food.
Or beer. Someone jokes, Where’s the onion blossom?

Stay or go? Save or shelve? Pictures in a plastic
box. Deeds. The child’s first drawing of a blossom.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The barred owl calls, Who cooks for you?
Who cooks for you all? Along the cobbled

streets now clear of cars, the lamps come on
at dusk. Banks of clouds haunch low on the horizon,

waiting for the soup to boil. Where’s the hail
of locusts, the plague of boils, the black

deaths clustered like walnuts on the branch?
Squirrels forage in the quiet before the storm.

Bead by bead they’ll hide their store
of afflictions, enough to eat through the cold.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What did we hear that morning?
The sound of deer running through the woods;
and from over the ridge, that highway whine.

You said, The left hand is for warding off,
the right for receiving. I tried to remember
the sequence of gemstones looped around the wrist—

peridot, bauxite, rose quartz, crystal, amethyst:
each one strung and tuned to the heart-strings.
So we reverberate to each other’s calling:

silence is a desert hung with midnight stars,
the thrum of quiet waking. Somewhere a wing,
rippling air that the other breathes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Note: This poem has been temporarily hidden by the author.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

A restless wind turns over leaves
and enters, searching through the house
when we unlatch the windows.

*

Cobblestones emerge from under
veils of water and moss to turn
their eyes toward the sun.

*

What star is crossing rapidly toward another
in the heavens now? So glad for them, I turn
my face toward the light of their passing.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The beginning, or the end
of an affair? Water obeys

the tidal surge. Last night’s moon,
liquid wafer. Coin that pays

for air so clear today, sunlit
leaves green as June again.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Where is your silver tea set, that gown of fine
embroidered silk, its train of gauze?

Ropes of pearl wound at your neck,
your tiara’s ruby diadem offset by the dark

waterfall of your hair— so self-
possessed, your bearing wrought by mountain

life, cold air, knowledge of the vengeful gods
whose hungers root, white and deep, hard

within the writhing animal’s entrails.
Askance, you look upon the roaring crowd

at carnival, eight thousand strong who’ve come
to gape at such uncommon beauty. You know the fog

will sift and bloom through centuries,
lay cloudy vermeil upon dissolving bones.

And we wonder if, beneath the city streets
breast-plated with garbage, the blood of some

old sacrifice still smolders, slow
flame the rain can’t quench.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Shh. Say nothing of the racket of jays
in the crown of an oak, commotion

of feathers every which way—
I don’t know either how to find

the way back to the garden; only
now there is everything to say.

Moths lie still on the mesh
of the window, light

being the project
never quite done.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.