october scraps

Most people on our street greet Fall with pumpkins

and campaign signs.

Someone's planted

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

--just like it was, I suppose,in the fifties,

when men were men. We knew then 

we were fighting the right wars.

Next door they've fenced their yard with flowers,

a bright thicket fence, dense with yellows, purples, reds  

humming, bee visited. 

From their power lines birds sit

and comment. It's not political, just

a place to perch--

to pour, fall voluble, their calls 

on repeat. Some bird version of

KEEP OFF MY LINE,

my branch, my bit of street.

 

September pieces

We live our days' work;

the sky glares down: blatant,

vengeful, orange

with far off fires.

We crawl through our days' work

like unwinged flies,

soapfooted, 

honeystuck,

besmeared with lies.

I'm piecing quilt blocks:

calm blues and greens,

right angles meeting 

squarely, where they should.

 

Outside the sky glares at us.

Our little screens blare at us,

promises, compromise,

thick with lies.

There is no peace,

no clear blue in us.

Things I put in my pocket

Most days we walk. The baby

picks up little precious things,

acorns, fallen leaves.

There is a dead bird on the sidewalk:

once it was a mockingbird, but

it does not say anything now.

Ants have eaten its eyes,

they seethe on it busily

packing away little parcels of flesh.

Next  door Miss Dorothy

white haired and stooping

pecks her tentative way

behind her little dog.

At the end of the street, 

across the road,

the middle school looms

crumbling red brick

and cardboard covered eyes.

Into its mouth

brown children go back and forth busily

it swelters and chews them, but

they get free lunch.

My great grandmother gardened

My great grandmother gardened

her suburban yard: unlawned it,

planted it thick with beans, tomatoes,

peach trees-- an unruly, fruitful sprawl.

Indoors, she coddled shoots and starts

in yogurt pots. 

I remember how she filled all her windowsills 

with aloes and with wandering Jew.

She lived alone, green framed,

I remember how the quiet filled my ears.

She served me tomatoes, ripe and sliced

thick, dripping summer--she poured me 

sweet tea, thick with honey, fruit, and mint.

I watched my manners. I asked

the names of plants. I did not know, then,

how hard she was to love, 

that woman who made her own way, 

who divorced when women didn't,

who cherished no one. 

When I was grown, I heard

her children, dutiful, call her Mother

with no tenderness.

I remembered

she could coax new roots from a dry twig.

 

blues

I know at some brown

brink a sun's up

rising 

but 

Lord

some of these days--

 

It's not just my blues

on my back

Lord 

you know it's 

generations

have trod have trod have trod

when will we reckon

the weight

of generations

 

Lord you know

I got my own blues in my pocket too

and all that on my back

it ull press a man down

till he leaks oil like a seed

crushed

 

this boot on my back

can't press me deep down 

enough to that 

dear freshness sprining--

it's too deep 

beneath this dirt in my mouth

got this knee in my neck why

do men not reck God it's not just

my blood in this dirt in my mouth

that can't cry 

 

God do you hear 

these rocks

 

it's not just

 

 

 

ship, version 1

You were longboned, then, but lanky still,
an unbuilt youth. You'd be a solid ship,
I thought; your will
a worthy captain; through whatever ill wind
might rise, you would hold course.
And so I chose my ship, signed
the life I left away, to snug
myself into your path.
No mate, I hid me in your hold, and slept,
your arm embraced me.
I could hardly hear your heart,
dreaming,
And when an evil wind
whipped up the water at our heels,
ripped through our sails,
tore boards,
at last unshipped us into cold, violent sea--
There in the dark water your long arms
held me
as a man might hold his friend
not knowing whether they'd find some plank,
some help,
or drown together.

doggerel

Have you tried to write a sonnet, while a child fussed at your arm,

Or tried to tell you all the different kinds of Pokemon?

Have you rhymed a little quatrain--have you even turned a couplet

With a baby at your elbow saying Mom, can you just stop it?

There's something about writing that makes children need to snuggle;

Their plumpness is a pleasure, but it makes the task a struggle. 

I will write poems one day, I say, to the wiggler on my lap,

But today I'll scrawl some doggerel, and then I'll take a nap.