SOUTH WIND, CLEAR SKY 

 

Red hot Mama,

She’s an active volcano,

Though not likely to erupt, so they say—

Long thin white clouds wisping on the south wind,

Looking like the ghosts of pods and their peas,

Little white peas just peeping over the edge of their canoes.

She’s molten red, with her white veins bulging from her neck,

Far above what’s below, far below what’s above,

Green, blue, everything in between.

Will she blow? Who knows?

Until then she’s serene:

South wind, clear sky,

Myriads of ghost peas in ghost pods passing by.

 

     BUSYBODY

  

The snow is falling like nobody’s business—

So why am I writing about it?

 

It pirouettes beyond control,

Insistently whispering against my window pane:

 

Why don’t you just leave well enough alone?

Why can’t you just let snow be snow?

 

FLY PAPER, METAPHORICALLY

          “For art not thou

          A man like me,

          And am I not

          A fly like thee?”

               --William Blake

 

I brought my poems into your bookstore,

But didn’t know there was a secret code

Of manners in the game you’d have me play:

Monopoly. So I did not pass Go,

And walked away without two hundred bucks.

You blew me off as though I were a fly

Disquieting Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

Though they who have the gold can make the rules,

The men of vision understand a Fly

To be not necessarily the pest

That it may seem, but Human through and through—

A golden Fly! You should have swatted me

When I was in your range. You’ve lost the chance,

Now that I’ve buzzed off from your demesne.

 

     ARACHNOPHILIA

  

The black and yellow garden spider hangs

Upon her stabilimentum of silk,

From which her universe irradiates

As she awaits her flying insect prey.

At length the male bestirs himself for her;

She only bides her time for when he comes.

He builds a small web next to hers and then

Begins his mute romantic serenade,

Plucking on the filaments of her web.

But when at last he takes initiative

And climbs the fateful trembling airy stair,

He drops a safety line behind close by,

In the event that his beloved attacks

Before he gets a chance to mate with her:

For only when that deed is consummate,

He slowly yields his spidery will to live—

And then his faithful mate devours him.

 

She lays her eggs at night upon her bed,

A fabric woven from her writhing bowels,

And wraps them in a silky winding sheet,

And rolls the sheet into a silken ball,

A thousand or more eggs therein to guard,

Hung safely in the center of her web.

And as the weather cools, she waxes weak;

And when the first hard frost breathes out on her,

She dies suspended in her tapestry.

Her children leave the sac in hopeful Spring,

So tiny that they look like motes of dust,

All sprinkled on a trembling silken mesh.

We muse as each exudes its filament

Of silk that stretches on the longing breeze

And carries off the myriad spiderlings

To weave in time their webs of destiny.

 

THOU SHALT NOT COVET

  

Clematis clambers

Passionately over the fence

Onto the neighbor’s tool shed

 

The rotting floor sags

Beneath the roof that drips down

Melting snow and summer rain

 

Rusted and unused

The garden hoe and rake lie

Jumbled with an unwound hose

 

The window panes peer

Into the distance obscured

With cataracts of neglect

 

Would he even care

If I let in the daylight

Through the broken unlocked door

 

If I washed the glass

Sharpened the shears swept the floor

And put his house in order

 

Would it be a sin

If I offered back to him

Those implements neglected

 

Leafstalks twist and curl

The dead wood returns to life

Adorned with purple flowers

 

 

 

TO A VIRGINIA BLUEBELL

  

You nod to me across the trail

That runs before my garden seat.

With clustered bells of blue you greet

My visit with a subtle peal.

 

You wave your frolic fans of green

So gaily, as if you had met

Some kinsman or awaited yet

A long lost friend to grace the scene.

 

A friend indeed this scene has graced,

Projecting in his mental sight

A sphere within which Nature’s face

Beams out as with a mirror’s light.

 

Long lost no more, now recognized,

My roots beside yours in the earth,

Together we unite in mirth—

While botanists but classify.

 

Some people blow that way and this,

Whichever way the wind doth blow:

Some people fly like April snow,

And say you have no consciousness—

 

Unlike themselves, whose knowledge glues

Each specimen with abstract frame.

They see things but as things are named:

Myself, I share one Mind with you.

 

And I to you must nod my head,

Assenting with the voice of Spring

That tinkles from my bells and sings

Blue music in our flower bed!

 

            IMPERIAL MOTH

  

Within an earthen chamber they pupate,

Then crawl toward the light in their next phase

As horned and dotted caterpillars, lured

By sunshine beckoning them to leaves and warmth--

To die again one day, having stretched out

Their speckled yellow wings marked purple gray,

When still they are attracted to the Sun

Though born to be nocturnal.

                                               They are fooled

Not by the simple daylight, but by signs

Illuminated by man’s artifice: 

Street lights and floods that stay on through the day.

 

I saw a moth one sunny afternoon

Upon the wall of a convenience store,

Where driven by the glare of gaudy bulbs

He’d flapped his five inch wingspan through the dark

And worshipped there well past the break of dawn.

Displayed so well in all his panoply,

Did he become the morsel of some crow?

For I have read that where such sleepless light

As lured him is abundant, his species

Has fast become a rare phenomenon.