Green House, Black Trim

 My house is lime green

with black trim

like a garden

for grave diggers.

Surrounding it on rainy afternoons

are rings of brilliant jade leaves

on shiny black trunks

swaying like boxers.

One of the spindles

has come out from the porch rail.

It holds steady, but

I don't trust it like I used to

when the noisy morning starlings

and the raucous ones in evening

sounded and numbered

the same. 

Yellow Mums

 yellow mums

little dark green shadow

to june's

boastful, favored roses--

they have all

turned to twisted thorns

married to

the clippers' blades

but you

love the autumn

and are

humbly lovely now

aren't you,

yellow mums?

Oriental Bittersweet

Oriental Bittersweet

her arms full of swans

never meant, no really never

meant you any harm.

Oriental Bittersweet

cuts her body with a blade

and never sees, no never really

sees the mess she's made.

Oriental Bittersweet

has horse blanket hair--

blacktop eyes and blackstrap tongue

and promises she cares.

Oriental Bittersweet

knows EMT's by name--

she'll take you with her, with her taken

here she comes again.

______

Hollyhocks, Sunflowers, Marigolds

 

Hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds

in a field by a white barn waving

where the orange cat searches for the little voles

hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds

just a stone's throw over from the spring foals

and the little stream its low banks laving

hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds

in a field by a white barn waving.

______

a triolet for Lillian's image

over at Dverse Open Link. 

 

Emmeline in Trefoils

 

birdsfoot trefoils

Emmeline by dawn light

borrows roses from your bed

Emmeline by moonlight

brings back petit fours instead.

Italy had its masters

who loved Emmeline with their oils

touched by God in Trinity

and Emmeline in trefoils.

Emmeline in summer

reads your letters until the fall

then she wades into the water

to the boatmen's barcarolle.

______

for Word Garden Word List--Tenderness. 

I have broken my own rule and only used 2 of the List words (Italy and summer.) I had used several others but they all ended up on the cutting room floor. I decided to keep and post the poem anyway because I think it speaks to the source material(s), which was my aim. 

This is the fourth of my Emmeline poems. The previous three:

Emmeline By Evening (2009)

Emmeline By Wolf-Light (2016)

Emmeline In November (2021)

A Cautionary Tale For Young Gardeners

 

There was a seed lying on the ground.

She picked it up when nobody was around.

She turned it over, lifted to the light.

It turned her fingers an upsetting sickly white.

"Little seed,

(she said)

Imma plant ya in the yard.

Imma plant ya

(she said)

where the ground is wicked hard."

Next day--

a big, black, dangerous-looking vine.

it say,

"Feed me skittering bugs and water me with wine.

Sleep with me at night

until you start to lose your sight.

Whisper me your mind

until you've gone all white-eyed blind.'

What happened to Dakota?

She went outside without a coat-a.

Found a seed from a devil weed

and down the wicked Styx she float-a. 

______

for What's Going On? -- "seed"

Music: Grace Potter & the Nocturnals White Rabbit

Tiger

 

there is a tiger

who travels through each of my arms.

One is filled with jacaranda

with the moon asleep in its branches.

the other is a dusty courtyard in afternoon

with a fountain 

and a small child who walks its low wall.

your little balcony

is where the tiger likes to go.

there is a purple reflection in the fountain--

the child 

peels an orange to find the moon at its center,

and me in your arms

near the jacaranda branches

where everything is harmonious

and fragrant.

My Lost Friend

 

My lost friend

is dreaming now of moon-silvered streets

and the lawns in tones of blue and green

like peacocks in repose

Is your lover, my lost friend

one of those?

My lost friend

has disguised herself in the ivy vines

twining around the garden stones

where the gray cats sleep

Is your lover, my lost friend

one of these?

My lost friend

wraps her heart in fox fur red and black

and waits in the dawn for the light to come back

across the lawns in morning mist

Is your lover, my lost friend

coming back to you like this?

Black Calla Lilies On My Grave

 

When my home was made in the wind

in owl-silence, as patient as the planets,

black calla lilies grew upon my grave

where Hera's spilled drops transformed.

I had a million sisters, the scattered stars,

a sibling mobile telling night-stories

as I slept on the silver surface of a stream.

My mother was the moon; my father flame.

Black calla lilies grow upon my grave,

where I was born into flesh, a sentient stone.

I wandered off, unattended or so it seemed,

and made my home in sand and sorrow.

Like a branch in the rain, my body grows

heavy, a stiff cocoon my winding sheet.

Below me, the black calla lilies watch

as if I were now the sister-star singing.

Where is the wind where I made my home?

Where the owl-silence and the patient planets?

By day my father whittles, by night my mother shines,

whispering, " 'Calla' means 'beauty' dear child--

Come home to the lilies, to the wind, and to us."

________

for What's Going On? --"say it with flowers"

Music: Ane Brun All My Tears

Clover Flowers

 

I have a memory of a clover field--

white flowers in the warm June green

like spilled sugar on a farm wife's sleeve.

I have a memory of a spring lamb--

carried to the shed as the ewe screams

under a summer sky blank as muslin.

In the farm house, an old couch.

a television, and a sturdy oak table.

There is a savory aroma and mint jelly

set out with the white china plates.

My memories mix like a bowl of vegetables,

gravy on the tablecloth, blood on the ax.

I don't like to remember,

even in summer, on a bright afternoon.

_______

for What's Going On? "Memory"

Music: Cat Stevens Into White

Pomegranate & Oleander

 

I traveled through an arid land

where pomegranate trees bent like new widows

to find myself in a room with white stucco walls,

an almond in batter, with oleanders in a vase. 

Scarlet oleanders, delicate and bright, fragile

pages of dawn in a book of finite days.

The windows are narrow and look out on the bay

blue with white edges, sewn for a tide that never stays.

White boats like a spray of Nerium oleander

on a blue-edged plate set in a shifting hutch,

or whites of eyes from evaporated dreams

of a lover on an iceberg, things slowly lost and such.

I traveled through an arid land

a museum of what not to become,

born from a pomegranate seed,

fed on oleander, a gull duty-married to a setting sun.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Joy School.

Alician Red

 

There we were, all alike in white

little siren-sailors calling ourselves,

faux black hearts beat Alician red

guided still by the stuffies atop our shelves.

Chittering big-eared receiving stations

gathering gossip in the vegetable patch

to take back to our warrens to sort and parse out

which colors clash and which might match.

We lived on pellets but dreamed of rows

of fat tomatoes to pile in a pram.

We had the side-eyes of those good to eat

and batted our lashes at the young huntsman.

_________

for Bjorn at Dverse--"get to know kennings"

Don't forget that the Word Garden Word List stays active through Sunday1

Farm

 

The butter is hard--

the biscuit takes it like a punch.

Eat your crumbs, child.

The milk expands, exploding the jug.

Cold cows care for nothing,

least of all the farmer's hands blue on the udder. 

This is agri-business. There are rules.

The clerk is here to count the kernels.

 No kindness from crows hard and polished as obsidian.

The vane is a zig-zag escapee

shouting "Freedom!" from inside the wind's mouth

where white teeth worry at fogged-up windows.

Automated fakes pass out promises

in Dixie cups, hats bobbing like generator vent caps,

a rooster in every head, erupting with cold words. 

Paint the chickens black and white

and dress them in freezer bags like crunchy raincoats.

Salute the magpie, child,

for luck, your ribs bent into a horseshoe and nailed

above the big open door

where our policies are performed.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Philip K. Dick

Black Blooms

 

If black flowers gave the earth its bones

and with their roots made purpose for a heart

could they--in profusion--each bloom alone

when innumerable leaves keep petals apart?

I bring you black blooms

which in dreams were red

strewn on a grave

which must do for a bed.

If black flowers' heads nod with heat

as a lover's will when told it's over

will frost only make them more discreet

and scornful of the simple clover?

I bring you black blooms

which October will kill

with inevitable, merciful

pitiless skill.

If black flowers die in a devil's vase

will November lament it's empty sill?

And will I curse your indifferent face

like black blooms preserved in a frozen rill?

Tulips In Headscarves

 

Rain comes at night

wandering between buildings,

wearing a long black coat

and the silent hours.

Pink tulips beside the walk

dip their heads,

delicate and disappointed

as fallen birds.

Slate roofs facing the moon

shine for the rain

but feel nothing, admit nothing

aloof and blank.

Rain is the sky's child

but dies earthbound.

Tulips in their headscarves

mourn in

performative

pantomime.

_________

For What's Going On? "Rain".

Maury Wills

 

When I see the blackbirds and sparrows 

                                          speeding low in the sky

                                          ahead of a storm,

They remind me of a childhood summer

                                         and Maury Wills, the

                                         stolen base king.

I remember my father's barber crowing at the tv,

                                       "What a crackerjack!"

                                       as I waited in a chair, feet dangling.

When I see the red squirrel take over the feeder

                                      despite being smaller,

                                       I think of Maury Wills beating the odds

and the throw to second.

He disrupted the pitcher, catcher, and fielders

                                    like the neighbor cat in the ground ivy

                                    sure to pounce, just a matter of when.

His feet were his fortune, raising the dust sliding in

                                     on legs purple with dreadful bruises

                                      and red with rash, the Dodgers' captain

doing whatever it took.

When I see the grackle strutting with its gotten peanut

                                  I think of Maury Wills'  bright jewelry--

                                  the Hickock Belt, MVP and World Series rings.

The resourceful chipmunk makes me wonder, what is it like

                                to be smaller, quicker, cheeks stuffed

                                 while the circling hawk goes hungry?

Then I realize that I already know these things, even as

                                the years steal on me and I grow slower

                                sitting in my sanctuary, watching the action.

_________________

For Word Garden Word List--Mary Oliver. 

Process notes: Maury Wills is a lifelong favorite of mine, first for his baseball skills, and later for other things as well. He grew up in the projects in Washington DC and had no idea a black kid could hope to play in the majors until a Senators player named Jerry Priddy showed up at his local diamond to talk to the kids playing ball there. Wills never forgot it. Too small to be a slugger, he learned to switch hit and to use his speed, a forgotten weapon in baseball in an era of burly bashers.

   It was a long road to the big show for him, but when he finally got his chance, he ran with it (pun intended!). He went on to become captain of the Los Angeles Dodgers, break Ty Cobb's single season stolen base record, win an MVP award in 1962 and the Hickok Belt for sportsman of the year across all sports. He even made numerous appearances on television variety shows, playing the banjo--typical of him to choose such an instrument. 

   When his baseball career ended, and everything he had worked so hard to excel at was over, things changed. A girlfriend introduced him to cocaine, and Wills fell down, all the way down, into full-blown addiction. It took time, but once again the tenacity and drive that served him in baseball served him again in recovery and like me, he lived sober for the rest of his days. Maury Wills lived by his own lights, found great success his own way, and beat the devil to finish up on a high note. 

   I have tried here to combine Mary Oliver's eye for the everyday wonder of the natural world with the story of a childhood hero, Maury Wills. 

Music: Tracey Chapman Fast Car

Breviary

 

If you won't put wildflowers in my hand

don't leave them on my grave

I'll have the haunted hillside there

with oaks for palisades

around my bones and all my silent

reveries around

my life of soap and wax and flesh

I've left without a sound.

If you can't think me beautiful

like pennies on a sill

that catch the sunrise slanted light

which wakes the whippoorwill

or liken me to harbor water 

at the set of sun

then please don't give me tepid words

you'd say to anyone. 

If you need a holy man

with Latin on his tongue

to spin a mothball rosary

to tell you where I've gone

just leave me here the time of year

when winter's hardening

I'll curl myself in a berry husk

to rise in rainy spring. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Madeleine's Ghost.

Black Velvet Rose

When I was a child

I made a catalog of sounds.

My fingernail across upholstery,

birds calling to each other in the yard.

The world spun

in oval vespers

from day to night

as wind spoke to trees in whispers.

Why was my voice someone else

when hearing it on a recording?

Why did I wake up so often

to echoing music in the morning?

Now, when I am very tired,

I hear the dead speak again.

A siren goes past in the street outside.

"I love that sound," says the ghost in my mind.

Rain and rivers help me sleep

with a black velvet rose in my dream

and the kind-voiced sweetheart I've invented there

says that dawn, or the devil, may care.

________

for What's Going On? --"Sounds."

Music: J.D.Souther Black Roses, White Rhythm & Blues

For the Mercy of Forgetting

 

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with scarlet red

and wear it as a binding scarf

sewn from every word I said.

If it were time for me to sleep

like a stone the river runs above

I would count the clouds from underneath

an accountant in the house of love.

If it were time for me to speak

with roses growing from my teeth

I'd talk of roots and bark and limbs

and dress my skin in paraffins. 

If it were time for me to pay

Charon for my journey home

I'd fill my purse with copper coins

and jelly made from angel bones.

If it were time for me to die

I would ring my rue with climbing vines

and lay my head where heads can rest

with hyacinths and columbines.

__________

image: black barlow columbine

The Vivid Dead

 

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead

winding wire around every bud in the garden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Making olive of jade and maroon of red

mixing invitation with heirloom toxin

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Staking a world with only frayed gray thread

hoarding every sweet fruit left to harden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Mixing sugar and rot into every word said

a borer warden of self without pardon

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Silence the dust-tongue kept in your head

and lie with your twin the idiot watchman

fearing poison in every innocent bed

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

______

A villanelle. 

Music:  Michael Kiwanuka Cold Little Heart