a poem by somebody else

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap

by Tony Hoagland
from Donkey Gospel, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

the mystery of seed

the mystery of seed
hidden in the dark
recesses of damp earth
somehow feels the warmth
of the sun far above
and sprouts
shoots up
we know not how

bangles

like your words through my mind

the bangles on my wrist rattle

there is a tone less clear

a tone that jangles the rest

out of order, out of place

until it is found and the metal beaten

which would make it
round and smooth and clear

as a fern that unfurls

chaos unsorted spirals
unravels and sorts itself
onto the page
scribbles become
ribbons of ink
and waves of colour
shadows shade
the lines of black
and white
giving depth and character
as a fern that unfurls.

home: others may, you cannot

a delightful blog post from my friend Michelle!

paper crane!

http://www.monkey.org/~aidan/origami/crane/index.html

rubber bands

rubber bands twisting

around each other

knotted in an infinite loop

twining not tight enough

to hide the gaps

that keep them detached

defined square edges

that when stretched

show wear—ragged

Poem 20

sea glass
celadon, bottle green
pocked by sand and wind
blemished, no longer complete
soft to the touch, mostly
hidden jagged edges
unlikely beauty
ordinary

Poem 19

the waves that beat
against my shores
are wearing debris
thrown into the ocean -- left there
that breaks apart
until it is so small
it is infinitesimal
that it is unseen; unknown
it is consumed
by the waves that beat
against my shore
and wear away
the stone of my cliffs
and mix it
with the salt water

Poem 18

Trees are warmer than snow
they draw their heat
from a source of great temperature
of constant temperature
from the soil
from the centre
from the earth
they have been provided for
they are safe --
from the snow.