petals and bees

Is there any dignity

In an afterglow?

To inhabit chalky coals

As clothing worn

When we make love,

But are not loved; only needed.

No other animal wears clothes

Or wants so fiercely to adore and be adored

In spite of itself,

That our pining grows forests

Of sappy, sticky branches

Cut down for someone’s lonely hearth.

We have all been useful in this way;

For if we are not adored, then we can be

A door for lovers to pass through

Or a warm fire to stay by

And though the light in their eyes is

Just the glow of contentment,

And not the flame of love,

There is poignancy to our afterglow –

After all, the room is warm:

For we are not giving ourselves up,

But expanding upwards as we give.

Go to your Anxieties often

Like one would go to a river,

Bent over the warm, muddy

First few inches to catch what glimmers –

Jasper or Serpentine,

Exposed now in your hand

For light to scrutinize – the wetness

Retracts, leaving behind a dull river rock

Like the redundant ones under your feet;

Find the seductive and you identify the fearful.

Each one makes you look, somehow.

What light can do is show you how ordinary

They both often are, so take comfort and

Make contact by reaching into the waters for

What frightens or mesmerizes you only to

Throw back the mucky rogues.

Go to your Anxieties by turning towards

Their glossy, mute cry for attention.

I both understand and do not

How we are in nature,

And nature is in Us.

It is a cosmic chiasmus

A trefoil knot:

Like when I walk

Under the heavy, white sky

Thinking how similar

Grief sounds to Thief

While everything is perishing,

Or stolen, or falling apart and

Submitting to the ground.

Then these stabs of pleasure, during

Times of stripping away

When the blood surfaces

To the Sycamore leaves.

I am alive and growing larger,

From the roots beneath my feet.

I am also tough skinned but vulnerable,

Now naked, now blushing

With singing all around.

I am to the tree,

What the tree is to me.

You lift me to the fruit

To unwieldy heights, to cadmium jewels,

A persimmon, and moss on my finger

With sorrel in our mouths and

Departure, like a leash around our throats,

Strained at the breadth of our histories.

I endure the zeal of your affection,

Its shuddering, maniacal fervor

Your industrious hands lost to morsel, scent –

The keepsakes of this valediction.

But I wrap myself in mystery 

My stonewall, winter season of silence.

Only a few lonely fruits, oregano there, mud on our shoes, a lull.

I fear your idolatry; it is looming,

Monstrous, above me like an obelisk

I read your fantasies in the hieroglyphics

As you press me against the tree with tremendous need.

                      I

To carry beyond is to put an eye on

The past. It is observing how much

Meaning one particular instance can hold

Beneath a trellis, which is really a

Poetic construction of our limited time,

Overgrown with ivy, a latticework of singular

Accumulated moments, adding beauty

To an otherwise ordinary, bell curve arbor –

Used here to frame all meaning like how

A trellis might be used in a photograph to

Establish perspective, then order.

                           II

In passing a neighboring residence, one glimpse:

Down a corridor, somewhat concealed

By ivy; at a boy in green pajamas

Standing alone, his hair yellow,

Emblazoned by the sun, by which

His small, energetic body is made

Serene, and lost like my cursory

Glance in his direction, transference from

Him to me to you, of being consumed in a

Particularly warm spot of sun on

An adolescent spring morning, when

Nature commands one to shiver in delight and be still.