This week’s poetry reading includes thirteen poems from The Naturalist. As always, the text of the poems are below and their titles link to the original post. This is the final poetry reading for National Poetry Month, but based on the positive feedback I have received, I’ll be doing more readings in the future. Enjoy!
Gold liquid back lit,
by the sunshine coming
and going behind frozen clouds,
forms a glowing pillar above
the dandelion surface
braided first then,
as the flow slows,
a cylinder becomes wavy
as impact climbs up the column
back into the teapot.
Three to four minutes before
at one hundred eighty degrees,
the clear water divided
balls of rolled leaves,
half on top, others below
slowly breathing, curling
into the space between,
regenerating their sun-capturing
plant form, but only
in appearance while rays
fell on deaf cells and shimmered
like old bronze door knobs.
Drinking Tea
Fog forms in the late afternoon
on wire-frame glasses and catches
pale sun from between tall buildings,
blinding the wearer from their journal.
Ceramic cup scrapes its saucer,
scouring inelegantly for its seat,
finding it only to leave again.
Tapping over and over like charcoal
searching the walls of a cave.
There is an old cast iron fence
that I walk along to sit at a bar
and drink burning whiskey
or eat stale popcorn. Outside
a gnarled dog, who has been taught
not to love, pulls at his leash
and collar and bares his teeth.
It would be rude not to greet him.
Phantom form of a sparrow
rests in the soft yellow grass,
beside the tired storm drain.
Collecting fallen leaves under her wing,
holding them close to her white bones,
hopeless against the coming June rain.
Soon the leaves will break free,
she will float away to feed flowers,
consumed by the world,
better for the love she gave it.
Pin pricks of light skitter the blue-black expanse,
visible waves of invisible energy in between
lift and pull the stars across the surface of the pond.
The tree you lean against
branches into a galaxy of trees,
grows in a forest long and dark as the sky,
reaches higher until it ignites.
Heron pulls up from the water,
her long beak tracing first the riverbank
then lumbering clouds over head.
Ducks walk on ice by the shore
and pick at leaves and twigs floating slowly.
All together, they take to the water
as the sun finally finds an opening to the fish
and bends light across the length of the current.
Heron finds no comfort here,
prefers to hunt in the shadows.
She picks up her tired legs
and draws a silent blue-grey band
beneath the buckling willow.
As I move through these woods
space feels more and more rigid,
all other things are stubborn
going about the tasks that make them—
mouse is combing through grass for bugs,
the oak tree is drinking sunlight and breathing
deep breaths that float away as clouds.
Owl was watching from the jagged leaves,
but closed her eyes to get some rest.
There are fungi turning death
into toadstools for the elk and beetles
rest in the mushroom grove and brawl in the dirt.
The only thing that feels flexible is time,
whiskers twitching in slow motion,
each ancestor tree forming a silhouette
around the branches I see now
shaking as owl floats away.
Breathe in and out and let the calm
water glint in your eyes, there are broken waves
and broken driftwood and cracked shells
on the rocky shore as well as feathers
and other lost things and maybe thats a bone,
how carelessly they have been placed here and there!
Oh, how the spruce leans for the water,
trunk bending uncomfortably over stones
and what was once a spruce friend.
Breathe and lets figure out
all these little messes you have here, Lake.
When was the last time you cleaned debris
off your long white shore? Breathe!
I tell myself all the ways I would make this lake
better and none of them are right.
I walk along the shore and feel cold
and blessed and small.
Weeks and no shadows
from the arching sun
behind the cloud wall
just great bland buildings
melting into the streets
and soggy shoes drying
at the bottom of the stairs
away from the sounds of tea
coming to a boil and cooling
too far from warm blankets.
Cold wind from the water
pulls ribbons of cloud
from charcoal mountains
down the city streets,
morning light casting
gold lines along the sidewalk,
washing trash through the gutter,
illuminating huddled bodies,
backs to the glowing range,
faces without sun.
There is something in the sound of the woodpecker,
in the weight of the moose shoulders,
that is also in the branching of the maple
and reflected in the roots below the green sea.
The cracking sound of beak on bark echoes
along the paths through the forest
that fragment at each moment of past indecision,
weaving in and out of this moment.
There is something in the school of minnows,
in the wildebeest migration across crocodile river,
swirling tadpoles in thunderstorm pond,
drying up into the sky that turns red then black then blue.
There is something in flowers—
each and every flower that unfurls and fades,
falling onto the ground under shadow—
that is like a memory, like a cloud of memories,
bright and brittle as each neuronal flash.
Flowers open cautiously, joyously,
ignorant of the forecasted rain,
content to be as they will be in their time.
One may be thought of as a tragedy—
to see these delicate blues and yellows
topple to the earth so soon and float away—
but together they are a triumph
endlessly spilling
bright colors into this world.
Poetry Reading #3