tryingpoetry

Goddamn I'm Thin

My emotions stretched out drawn around the posts and signs pulling tighter

To bounce with a pop but damnit don't break

Singing

The sapsucker sang at the peak of the roof carelessly ignoring me and most all of humanity only grateful for a high perch

Spring

Spring hasn't sprung but it's getting closer seeds in the ground marks my season sun on the porch and the songs of robins and sparrows

We're all home now, like the old days before cars and in each other's space and I can't stretch my legs enough except

When I haul the lumber to the garden knees in soft soil, dark brown and caked sweat falling off my face bruises on my shoulders

Bare new kiln dried wood smells like work and new things But the bog will eat it over time and until then It will hold back the canary grass While seeds are sewn

February Rain

Glossy faceted lights halogen and filament and led poke and bounce around the gray sky the crystal clear drops clinging to windows are gemstones in the gravel taste of the wind in my nose seasalt

Silk

It happens fast and you don't know it because you're the frog and not the cook

The sled runs downhill like it's on rails but it doesn't cook that way

And the brakes burn acrid ozone in your nose but you crank into the turn

The sky was purple this morning Just a little pink and the glow on the horizon Through the late fall branches stripped bare by the wind

My country is dull yellow and grey now it's the mountains and sound in my ears of rain

The hills are silhouette green and the flooded fields bright Just a little reflection among the ducks of the clouds through false dawn woke by a damp sun

My country is dull yellow and grey now it's the mountains and sound in my ears of rain

My ride bumps along while the caffein flows through my veins And the window refracts and reflects my thoughts as much as the landscape And the flooded fields with their ducks

My country is dull yellow and grey now it's the mountains and sound in my ears of rain

My country is dull yellow and grey now The rain never stops

Fall Fell

Fall was a bigleaf maple leaf on a main branch green stemmed born in spring spent all summer on her task sending her work back to the trunk until she grew old

In retirement her shoulders golden spreading all over Until with her family she lit the tree alive before the air turned cold before the wind came

Until one day She knew she was done and longed for the ground let go

Gliding down stem-first pirouetting in the air Riding the wind with a shawl upon her back

Write on my Coffin

Like they did for Grandpa that day I wore red saw it too Make the words scrawl instead of neat no fonts or serifs Let them be hard to read on the pine wood rough cut and not sanded Because I want to go back to ashes and dust let your words go too

My memory will be the taste of well grown fruit the mineral taste of venison The smell of the dust in the air before the lightening starts and the drops fall down

Heavy and pendulous like life itself landing finally home, in the grass or in the dirt, before being taken up again to fall over and over and over

Sediment

Seabeds and valleys layer cocomino fossils in between and ephemera written in glyphs on rocks Over time slow

A soul is sedimentary layered emotion spark and life in the middle Perceptions filtered and bands lay on time the stream washes them away And they lay on again

Thinner is brittle so gather as much as you can Let the pressure make it stronger so the water and sand will only polish the solid rock

Water

She danced in the waves leapt with joy Sand fed through her fingers smiling in the sunset The edge of the world

And left the salt and the long rolling waves Ranks of breakers and the soft floor While the Sun boiled in the ocean

The clouds highway Weather and river Valley full of farms Two tall towers stood Into the hills

She slept like a charm Tentative child Speaker to dragons Uncertain sapling From the old uncertain tree

She dressed formally labeled her case, folder and stand Waited patiently left and watched I waded into the new place

Her nervousness witnessed by her mother where do we go Where do I sit where do I find my paper Over here

In the sanctuary Dozens of children Tuned up chaotic notes Alone and different Until a wand raised

In the sanctuary Dozens of children Played a single note Beautiful and They know

And I watched her write on the score And speak to the neighbor playing next-door and raise her horn, posture strong

Dozens of children Who had not met Began to play As though they had known each other forever Ode to Joy

She was back there again In the saltwater beach Jumping in the waves wind in her hair and I wept

Her tribe puts the mist in a spiderweb Stacks the kernels on the grain Hangs the snow on the mountains The trees on a slope Booming big as the sea and quiet as the smallest spring her tribe is gentle and strong Stronger than me