Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
with jewel colors. And the dead
cherry still plays host to insect life.
The sign that points the wrong way
isn’t necessarily wrong. You know
what it’s like to pick at the same scab:
play the music in the same way. Don’t get
ahead of yourself— for a change,
let the day worry about its outcomes.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
With some trees, the knotholes
are among the last things to go.
You can find them staring up
from the ground, eye sockets
that never belonged to a skull.
It makes sense that trees would grow
their hardest wood around the weakest
points in their architecture.
This is called the branch collar,
& it is woven with wood
first from the branch
as it overlaps onto the trunk
& then from the trunk
as it overlaps onto the branch.
Behind the collar, in the parent
trunk or limb, the branch core forms:
a cone of decay-resistant wood
shaped like a spear with the flared
base facing outward, keeping
the agents of rot at bay
long after the rest of the branch
has fallen off. This is the knot.
Arborists talk of intergrown
& encased knots, loose & sound
& pin knots, red & black knots.
We who know them only from lumber
might imagine hard pills the tree
had been unable to dissolve.
We would not be wrong.
Each time a tree says yes to the sun
a no begins to form, firm & sharp
& pointed inward.
Based on a photo post from March 2011.
“… who needs a needle
to thread the seamless labyrinth
of the rose?” ~ D. Bonta
Because they bent
too far across the walk
and scratched your cheek
or arms whenever you passed,
I tied the roses back
with twine; and yet
their flushed and creamy
scent is warmer still,
more than the radial glow
of motion sensor lights.
In response to Via Negativa: Thorn.
Thorn begins with thorn,
a dead letter from
the Old English alphabet.
It’s an aborted branch,
a weaponized nipple. It draws blood
instead of expressing sap, Mother
Nature red in tooth & claw,
rose-hipped or hawed.
But of course it doesn’t bother the bees,
for who needs a needle
to thread the seamless labyrinth
of the rose?
Scree of some wild creature overhead, wing like a stroke of graphite that flickers just out of sight. On the way back, we drive through soybean fields yellowing from the heat; and whole stands of trees bent like saplings from the last passing storm. A sky the color of beaten copper. Everywhere, some reminder of the fragile. But also what persists; surprises. For miles and miles, not a house or rest stop. And then— Where did those droves of tiny moths come from, riding tiny bits of prayer flags into the wind? Bodies of soft brown. Velvet fuzz of cattails and rushes. Perhaps, this time, the boatman will let us through. We cross the Chowan River just as crickets drill tin can holes into the evening.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
To slip
under you need courage, or
great fatigue. To float
requires a skeptic’s mind.
To breach into light, first the
surface must be expecting you.
The fact is that we are living in a time when the decision to be an artist, to continue to create in spite of everything that’s happening around us, IS a radical political act. This is, I feel, quite a dark time, potentially destructive to the best and most noble aspects of the human spirit. And that’s precisely why it is terribly important for artists in all disciplines to continue to create, even when it feels like there’s little market and little appreciation for our work. Just doing it, and making the difficult decision to continue to do it — to live creative lives that celebrate what life is and can be — is both defiant and affirming, and it’s crucially important. People need to know that someone they know — a neighbor, a friend, a cousin — is committed to the arts. Young people particularly need to know this.
The stone isn’t dull;
it’s just too shy to shine.
The stone isn’t still;
it’s just practicing an extreme economy of gesture.
The stone isn’t mute;
it’s just making up its mind how to begin.
When I lived in a glass house
it was my most honored guest.
The hinge between them is slight: a moderate pull with the wrists,
and the chopsticks come apart. Pale, unlacquered: permeable.
She is lonely in that house: cabinets stuffed with old lace and chiffon,
flagstones of cracked shale. Eyelets, keyholes: equally permeable.
Mornings, I’d wake there to things that to me resembled light: clinked spoons,
smell of browned onions in the pan; bread rolls dipped in coffee, permeable.
I remember the sound of her old Singer sewing machine, the cushion,
the orange chalk, the pins. The needle makes surfaces more permeable.
Some things grow even more tenuous with time. The tin roof, never patched,
now leaks rain water into plastic pails. How does one seal what’s permeable?
How to fulfill duty in the midst of difficulty? In the end it seems I always
fall short; regretful I’ve failed, my best intentions pockmarked, permeable.
In response to small stone (129).
You were no less terrifying
for having been
entirely fictitious.
You were big & round
& very, very red.
I saw you whenever I squeezed
my eyelids shut
& faced into the sun,
practicing for the flash.
I worried that Reagan
might mistake you for
a jelly bean—
groggy from a nap,
groping for candy
he’d blow up the world.
However it happened, I knew
it was only a matter of time.
You were, after all, made
to be pressed,
shaped to fit the finger,
even if only for the briefest
of momentous occasions,
like an engagement ring
for a shotgun wedding.
Yet you wouldn’t have been
anything fancy,
just molded plastic.
When finally pressed,
you would’ve clicked twice—
no third time
for the charm.