All posts in Poetry
I Don’t Know Everything
A half moon even
can be very bright,
enough to silhouette the ducks
who glide to land
in the swelling ponds.
Stegosaurus Barn
we drove up highway 5 past Ridgefield, WA and all the farmland the giant stegosaurus barn lurched out of the marsh
thunder from another mother
i expected the thunder
of the woods
to have white tipped wings
and in the moss
where the rain is kept
i waited for a storm
True Story Up High
So here we are way up high in India where centuries of history buzz like bees. One day, when the sun has just risen over the peaks opposite, the birds crazy with joy, I am drinking coffee, which grows right on this farm by the way, hot and up high both. So happy in a chair on the porch, my wife too here with her hot drink. Our daughter with us, four and three-quarters years old. She is quiet a long time, perched on the stone wall above the misty big valley. Finally she says, “The world can’t go on forever because I can’t count forever. One, two, three, four, five, six. See . . . I would die first.”
The Forest
The hellebore is blooming outside the porch where the dogs run each morning, night… their white green blossom caught in amongst sword fern and the King Alfred daffodils that will bloom later this month. Spring, late winter, is a quiet return. Drinking coffee and leftover rain and dew catches the new growth on roses, their stems arc and bright green now shows at the ends and middle branches.
Good Faith Effort
Here we are, then. Unlikely potter, one ogre, three new ducks.
We like it all close together like this, grouted with footpaths. Nurses, a city planner, five little doctors vying for space. Somebody put grass in my ear. Where’s that helpful princess?
The sun comes out and I swear these teenagers are taller than they were when it was raining. Going to nationals.
Some of us take a boat to work. Steel and glass and smells, we return to this green place to learn all the things a stick can be. Sword, staff, mast. Stethoscope, spoon, magic wand. Healers live here, that’s for sure. Where’s that bike pump?
