Taking Out the Compost (The Lyric, Spring 2024)
"The compost pot is full." I lay down pen
And step outside. All creatures come alert.
On the porch railing, Carolina Wren
Eyes me, peeks up, repeats--that flirt!
Startled gray squirrels abandon feeders, glare.
Mourning doves attend, assess, let me pass.
Chipmunks chase (or hide). Chickadees don't care.
Poised cottontail continues chomping grass.
I dump the compost: "They engage with me.
Our beings intertwine." Fervor expanded,
I start back. Studious turkey vultures, candid,
Circle. Expecting more fresh corpse from me?
Porch wren perched on wall vase snatches fake leaf,
Gloats, darts away. I step inside. "That thief!"
A Poem About You (The Lyric, Spring 2024)
So you want another poem about you:
"It's nice to have poems written about me!"
I'll start with this (it's very true)...
Shriek: "Don't you dare put that in about me!"
What? Sonnet composition by decree?
Why shouldn't people know that about you!
You'd cloak love's true blossoms in secrecy?
All right, then. How about this about you:
Within my soul resides a shrouded text
Your sacred love inscribed. I could not find
Such words before you: I was ill-defined.
You are language I strive to comprehend:
I work to transcribe, but remain still vexed:
Words that bespeak you I must ever amend.
Our far too brief excursion about to cease,
We walked the woods to Dorr Point--one last parting
Immersion in resuscitating peace.
But what we witnessed at trail's end was startling:
Jangling restless roiling commotion, wild
Jostling spit wave chops smacking granite blocks
(Compass Harbor's usual calm beguiled).
Delighted, you danced across perilous rocks.
Evidently, a fading North bound storm
A thousand miles away composed the scene
(Cosmic mechanics fated its genesis).
And we were there because love's motive impulse
Had brought us there--commingling life with this
Enchanting dance of water, rock and sun.
Ageless Nymph (The Lyric, Winter 2023)
The ageless nymph knows naught but to educe
life's art: perform her garden ministry,
mindfully cipher Earth's geometry--
counting, pruning, making the world profuse.
I fear to stir: what turn might that induce?
My modern glance assaults her secrecy:
she starts, pales, trembles, darts away from me,
sensing I once applauded her abuse.
Trampled by zealous gods, she fears the light:
eternal being, that one true Faith distorted;
then, further, Science's piercing lens contorted--
excising nature's spirit from our sight.
Sad form--cross centuries deep you've watched and pined
as logic's triumph warped the Western mind.