bequests

TO my children, let me leave
my love of beetles, their bright backs
gleaming, God's little gems

and of fungus, diverse and startling
in the world's damp places

and of words, that bubble on your tongue
that turn flips, that warp and warble,
bright gigglous things.

Let me bequeath
a chain of prayers, precious
to the God of beetles.
Prayers he gathers up
and stoops to bless
as they trundle over his palms.

Let me teach you
more than any thing, this
that your words too
are dear to him.

My children, bring him your prayers
as you gave me dandelions
and bruised mushrooms:
never doubting my delight
you pressed them eagerly
into my palms.

i do this badly, check back in two years

The myrtle's pink silk frills, that bow
its slender branches to the ground
then drop, and blow in drifts around
Sing praise

The unhurried travel of the vine
that climbs the gate, and steady, winds
its stems, and opens green leaves wide:
Doxology

The yellow shiver from the trees
where the shrill cicadas scream
to shake the air, scraping their wings
Sounds praise


The bright sweet waft of fragrant mint,
rosemary's pungent piny scent,
and savory thyme like incense lift
Doxology

The mockingbird that shears the sky
like silver scissors, with a liquid cry
flowing to harsh laughter, dry
Sings praise

We however wall ourselves up in thick metal,
swaddle ourselves in treated air and the stereo sound
of popstar inanities, idiotic anthems that drown out
the engine's roar. So insulated do we rush
on thick paved streets from box to windowed box

through a world of praise

sunflowers

Three's turned herself

upside down again,
she crows, she kicks
her heels above her head
merrily, her legs long now,
summer brown stems,
and her feet are like sunflowers

(how i love the round
proud bowl of her belly
flipped now over her dainty chin,
over her grin, wide
over her teeth)

three is a fierce season,
an age of fists and teeth
into the world
(such tiny perfect teeth,
like white pebbles)
she shrieks, she crows,
peremptory, jubilant

Daughter, don't ever give up kicking your heels.
When you change your thin chest
and your round cheeks
for a full size set
keep on insisting
keep on crowing,
shriek your need.

Sunflower soul, keep
turning the world
around your bright wide joy

Covid July

After the long flat months
trapped and masked
day after day the same: manna
again
we make a little room for
little sins
longing for cucumber
dust on our tongues
a long walk still through
how many months
or years
in the same damn sandals
and manna
just enough
again

Reading the Elizabethans, 1

I am
a catalogue of parts: a master's list
of lustering gems. A casket full of pearls
and sapphires, faceted, that flash
love's image to their lord.
A green wild world
to be dug up and treasured as a hoard.
I am
a glass, a stone, a form. Galatea,
warm figure, who can moan, can sigh, can kiss.
Or scribed and served up on a silver plate:
two breasts, of such a whiteness, such a size
to press. A narrow neck. Perhaps two eyes
to gaze on love with love. Two cherry lips.
A stomach, maybe, quivering and sweet.
A space between two thighs, white tender meat.
So the poets carve, and plate, and serve
something like a woman to the world.
Come, admire, eat.

cicadas

In the morning they begin
their shrill scream, trill
from every tree till the day
shakes with it--

Chew jagged great bites
of bean leaves, leave
vein laced rags
that yellow on the vine--

Leave their cast crisp shells
behind, backs split,
the empty legshells grasping
still--

The bugs themselves, dropped
beneath trees, a green
gleam fist big,
and glassy gold laced wings

doxology

You who are the word waiting
behind our monkey chatter
the slivers we cast up and grasp
the scraps we paste onto the great
deep space where you eternal
Are, and were, and will be.

Confetti, tesserae: our little
square minds weave little
webs. You who resolve
the pixels, zoom out, who hold
the little cells that fizz
and fade--Who sees the plan

imago Dei, we weave flat
ikons of your will, with our small wills,
we retell that great dark Word
with little scraps, that flash
and fizzle. Map data points
with neurons, bright, like glass

mirrors, sliver small. And you whole
skinless vast and frameless All
who waits behind our words
wore cells. Divided, multiplied,
housed parasites, grew skin,
grew blood, grew brain,

saw through two eyes. You walked
bone, muscle, skin; you died.
Whom we throw silver pins at,preserve and classify. Unheld
by ending, you rose, you opened
into Are. You go on being:

burgeon, bloom, divide, diverge, adapt, diffuse, direct.
You were, and are, and will be;
this little praise, pinned up
on endless word--

You, always, Are: purpose full
and thick with power.