Remembering June

A vine will bind a trellis or
Its own stem or empty air
And find no difference in 
Them, but share a reeling
Dance with earth, feeling
Time leave old growth
Behind to orbit, bend and
Let light subtend the mind.

Bark Borer

 

 

I have opened too many boxes,
Insides redolent of correspondence
Long closed, glue and dust,
Old collodion, lives closed,
Whittled pegs, strings,
Things cinched in stiff ribbon,
Parts. Paraffin.
I weary of the irreparable.
And so look beyond bottom drawers,
Basements, to beating hearts,
Out of webs,
Out of the past.
Is it
Time present or time preferable?
Much happens over what
Happened last.
Something one
Must decide:
To gather clues; to reason,
Open boxes from inside;
To be, and be reason applied;
To contain a search
Assembled in mystery.

Found-Poem: new flowers (Normasource)

Norma has had the flu! But she got out today and inspected her garden. She sent photos from her phone and a message --a message typical of a directness I can seldom approach in poetry. I reproduce it intact:

"new flowers:

I raked leaves over the bulbs, then the bulbs came up and look how they pushed the leaves up with them."

Gate

Bright jasmine on
Old palings, a
Treeline echoed
In clouds: things
Solid and things
Bleached in light,
In wonder, unreached
Heights, attention--
Unnoticed dances.
Things sing loud
In nature to
The mind and yet
We just don't
Get it all.
Left behind?
Not far, not wrong.
Grown in chances,
Survival is cyclic,
That's all, a song.

Lisa's Dragon

From chrysalid oak imagined
In the stuff of stars, swirling
Eddies, dreamers swimming
In enchanted channels,
Lisa's dragon emerged --
Underway amid wind-whipped
Towers in the sea, and
Higher among cosmic hours.
It beckons above waves--
Waves to you, waves to me. 

L'Homme Au Gant

                                                [1977 Kate Painting of Geo.]

[1975 Geo. Poem about Kate]
So I told her, "Kate, whenever you see me today
Please just smile and say 'It's all right.'"
So I stepped off the el and looked round
For a circus, laid my face to the colors
And grabbed the trapeze as it swung by.

The crowd was disappointed.
I'd let them down --half up the
Ladder, I could go no higher.
"Listen folks, I can't do the
Triple flip into the flying forest
Fire because I got a train to catch!"

Then WHAM! 
Halfway down the ladder, skinny
Me in sequined tights, caught
A WHOLE TRAIN! Kate 
Punched my ticket and said,
"They're applauding the guy who
Threw it, but it's all right. 

In Mind Is Time

In mind is time bisected,
Order imposed upon 
Imploding past--
Starts asleep in uncertain
Night, stars turn into
Thought, moon into 
Memory, edges light--
And night, heavy under
Dreams of things to be, 
Shambles into the sea.