forgiveness
one day after I nick him with the scissors
he says next time his hair is in his eyes
I may try again
I believe in second chances he says
with all the gravity of a 9-year-old
who has come to accept adult failings
what greater gift could there be
from your own child’s lips?
This is in response to a prompt from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s webinar Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry: keep a cloud journal.
Cloud Report, 23 May
to the west
over the half-grey half-white peaks
the clouds levitated in bands
closest to earth, they upwelled
like the hair on the back of your neck
when something’s not right –
a bland diffuse mass at the base
culminated in a fine tomentose top
then a band of blue
overlaid with a thin stripe of ethereal cirrus
you know, the cloud of harp glissandos
and then in the foreground
a small puff of cumulus
it was spring
with all the fickle shifting light and heat
that comes with waking
to the south, the sky collapsed in grey over the ridge
promising (insincerely, it seems) rain
and I sat on the small naked knoll
a meter or two above the last chest-high aspens
and congratulated myself
for having walked my body above
the enclosing dark-green forest
straight up into the blue
where I could have a word with the sky on my own
and the word was
yes
This is in response to a prompt from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s webinar Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry: she provided a list of natural history facts for us to use as opening lines, and suggested we either title the poem “Quarantine” or “First Love.”
quarantine with hummingbirds
hummingbirds can fly backwards
backpedaling like alien spaceships
zipping through the air
with the putt-putt of a Jetson flying car
diving and swooping like stunt pilots
dancing a mesmerizing U
in front of a potential mate
they’re the shiny movement to our days now
allowing us more liberties
each day that we prove our harmlessness
(they’ve kissed both of my sons on the head now –
what a gift)
o hummingbird
I will make myself so small
as to climb upon your back
and together
you’ll take us backwards
days weeks months
back to rubbing shoulders with strangers
to holding the door for someone
to playing basketball
and singing open-mouthed together
I’ll hold on to your back
green like sparkling lime rind
and close my eyes
while you fly us to safety
take us back to Friendly and Open
figure 8 those wings until
we’re breaking bread with neighbors
to seeing and reading lips
that say come closer
until, hummingbird,
you kiss someone else’s head
leaving the scent of spider silk
and celery-grey lichen
in their mop of uncut hair
baby toes
his toe hurts
on the inside
my insides recoil –
is this it then?
it’s still weeks
(if not months)
til we know
do you remember
those round baby toes
tender as sweet peas?
they’re always on the inside –
my infant sons
embedded in these now lanky
sometimes sullen
more often wise and generous souls
like reverse ancestors
ghosts of their young selves
bound to the present
shades/shadows stitched to their current forms
when they were born
the curious asked
what’s the hardest part?
being so vulnerable
(I always knew)
so many new ways to come to harm –
these beings from my body
out in the sometimes indifferent world
and I so imperfect to guard them well enough
tonight I will pray
for soft pink carefree souls
toes running barefoot tomorrow
dodging disaster
one more day
This is in response to a prompt from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s webinar Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry: make a list of three questions you wonder about and could look up the answer to. Write a poem about these wonderings.
wonders
wondering where the shaggy black bear sleep
and whether I’ll come upon one this spring
laid in a heap of fur bone sinew
next to a boulder somewhere
his mat of fur the only thing marking him
as different from duff
wondering where the calypso orchids are waiting
held in the earth’s warm heart
and when they’ll stretch their soft pink throats skyward
and what the boys will say
wondering how it feels to dive
like a male broadtail
or sleep ten hours
like my beloved sons
wondering whether Roxy the fox
has a dry safe earth
with a quiet writhing of new life beside him (or her)
all awake
today I wondered where are the deer?
hours later they pronked across the trail before us;
a bit of magic reaffirming what I believe
about life the universe and everything:
it gives us what we need
when our arms and minds stay open
This is in response to a prompt from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s webinar Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry: make two columns – lovely nature and not-so-lovely nature. What are the first three things that come to mind for each? Write them down under the appropriate heading. Now write a poem: I don’t want to be the [choose one lovely nature item]. I’m more a [not-so-lovely item].
slime mold over the rainbow
I don’t want to be the shiny rainbow
to sing out Everything is going to be OK!
even though the thunder and lightning
just washed what we know away
I don’t want to be primary-hued hope and cheer
to mislead the bedazzled into searching for a false pot of gold
I’m not here to break dull antiseptic white
into all the lovely shades embedded within
today I’m more the slime mold
dragging myself over the filthy lumpy mud
following a quiet call I can barely detect
searching out the others in our tribe
joining together to grow larger and stronger
trusting in transformation
moving together to a new safe place
with no map or plan to guide us
leaving the hateful violent floodplain behind
forming spores that will someday sow clouds
Owen took this black bear photo.
mourning cloak
ragged wings still shimmer
in weak sun
against all expectations
weathering another winter
squeezed in the tight clasp
of bark and trunk
how sweet that makes
today’s taste of willow nectar
just broken from bud
After I wrote this I found a photographer who was willing to take a picture of the weeping cherry tree, but it had already dropped its blooms. Maybe next year… Thanks to Rozanne Lee Anderson-Moreland for the photos.
weeping cherry
the most thoughtful gift
I’ve ever been given
she was a First Communion miracle
planted just for me
8 years old
our heights about matched
we grew up together
her hot pink flowers lit up the spring
and one year when she was little
robins nested in the heart of her crown
I never named her
five years later we grew apart
divorce took me to a smaller home
without a tree to call my own
but I still visited
still had a claim on that piece of earth
now, with my father gone,
the house and tree
willed to his wife,
she’s another thing I could lose any day
if I could have anything from that home place
I’d take a photo of her now
in marvellous bloom
higher than the house
also perpetual permission to trespass
to lay my bones down
on Walnut Creek shale
whenever it calls
This responds to a prompt from the Emergence Magazine Nature Writing class, where we wrote a couple rough drafts then merged the parts we liked of each. This combines elements of mouthing the forest and sidebells wintergreen facts.
sidebells wintergreen canticle
if I press a leaf to my tongue
like a communion wafer
will it bring the Maine woods
right back into my body?
an act of transubstantiation
wintergreen not just standing in for but being
birch, granite, lupine
long-fingered bays
ice crystals suspended in air
all infusing my flesh
like blue juniper berries
pressed close under the skin
of a lean chicken breast
?
I crush a leaf and smell nothing
no, this Colorado wintergreen’s
just not the same
I give the one-sided bells a shake
and there’s only the silence of missing magic
but it’s time to stop looking elsewhere for awe
to grow content with what’s inside
the smallest circle of here
at hand, spruce sap bubbled on the bark
makes 4 small crystal balls
reflecting my place in the world back at me
at a time when divination’s a godsend
I press one gently, then bring finger to tongue
and savor the jolt of spruce essence
clearing my sinuses
fulfilling and fueling a new desire
for something missing from my day-to-day
like when a kiss divulged the plush inside of my lower lip
or when my left foot first stood firm
or my freed collarbones went warm for a week
I never quite stood the same
my ribs expanded
by how sharp life can be
sidebells wintergreen facts
one-sided
Orthilia secunda
both parts of the binomial mean this
with a surety that can’t be misinterpreted
all the blooms are on the same side
yes, it is unbalanced
and that’s as it should be
just a fact
the weight of the unembarrassed stigmas
cascading down a single plane offsetting
the smooth airy lack of substance on the nonflowering side
you might look at it from every angle
twirl the stem between finger and thumb
look from above
peer from below
it’s inescapable
you can’t fabricate a symmetry that simply isn’t there
sometimes all you’re left with
is the real, dried, preserved truth
between your fingers
confirming that growth beauty fragrance
-all of these-
sometimes belong more to one side than the other
now what will you do –
say what you see?
or what you think they want said?
before you answer
I’ll make the root into an eyewash
and gently bathe your lids
until you say you can see clear
but I sense you need something more
here, lie down on this plush moss
and look up past a crowd of crowns
into the blue depth
where cloud effortlessly becomes fog becomes air
at precisely expected intervals
(this happens every day)
now put one hand on this lichened log
and the other on your trembling heart
and talk to me
about sidebells wintergreen’s
chestnut brown pumpkin-shaped corollas (when dry)
that hold a hint of woody scent
like star anise
or cinnamon.
how you expect to hear them tinkle when you shake the stem
and now, when you’ve settled in
to telling the sometimes single-sided truth
let’s talk about whether
our children should walk into their schools
this plagued fall
