Ground Cherry
Outside, a July sky | above the weedy meadow | amid stalks of golden rye | I bow to you. “Hello, | from what cold, clear bottle did you pop
Read MoreTag: nature
Imperfect Produce
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, it is the moldy strawberry
At the bottom of the basket. Full of beans,
I pick a peck more, and jump. Inside,
There is a moth developing, a roly poly
Now, and brown, but aspiring to gray,
If only for a few days, at summer’s
End, when the first cool, but frostless
Night ushers in the red and purple
And blackened fruit, which one (?)
Should not eat. I am not one.
They tell me to be she, who sheds
Her coat, and waits for the foliage
to turn yellow; I wait outside —
A balding hill of potatoes, turned
Green, through osmosis (?)
Of the clippings on this murder
Of crows. Interrogate them
Regarding the spots and rot, beg:
“What is going on with my garden?”
Roots and shoots and leaves, but
No children, excepting/accepting
Those born still or imperfect.
“Am I too old?”
At twenty-five, one should be quiet
About her fears of impotence and death.
I feel that I am not one, but two times,
And change. I change the way my hands
Look: she has become unstuck in time is
Of the essence: a term used in Business,
Real Estate, and Agriculture, namely
In the period between IUD removal
And the encroachment of invasives.
Is seven years enough to determine
how many rows : how many roses
will produce the best returns?
Return me to childhood, in early September
When the next season was growing season,
And, so too, the next and next;
When my one-track mind could focus
On the present, and the presents
That I might open on my birthday;
🎶 Happy Last Day of Summer 🎶
When I could tune out their cracking
Corn, and care for nothing, but
Shortcake, with strawberries and
Cream. It would seem so strange,
Life, but a dream.
This Land is Our Land
How many watches had it been,
when I first caught sight of Paradise?
Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?
Regardless, I would have kept kissing the dry land,
until it soaked in my sins,
had you not been
standing at my bower,
with tape
and parrot flowers.
The ship was splintered,
worse that any storm
or winter could do;
my lips, too.
Yet, I was fixed
on the mountains in the distance,
skirted in Doug Fir forest,
and decked with heavy fruits
(pear, apple, persimmon,
perpetually in season),
suspended in mist.
Never had I encountered a landscape,
as hard as it was soft,
particularly at the edges,
where rocky bluffs
terminate to sand,
and primrose grows
in mats that prick,
rather than provide respite
for the sick.
Yet, I was fixed
of the pain I had long-held,
from believing myself unhomeable
outside of childhood.
Or, perhaps, restored
to original condition:
an only daughter of an only parent,
(for which the treatment is
undivided affection
and absolute understanding).
How many men had it been,
when I first washed up on Paradise?
Seven – or is that the first digit
to come to mind?
Regardless, I would have kept gripping the shore,
until I was born into safety,
and then trained out of it again,
had you not offered more:
Your hand, a surrogate for my father.
Your land, for my Fatherland.
Walking in the Rain
On a persistent basis,
it will penetrate
your psychology,
making water come
up from the ground,
down from the sky,
and side to side,
at the same time.
As if shaken,
by an unseen hand,
your eyes will twinkle,
and then fade to coal,
your arms will swing out,
into larger and larger circles,
and then snap, as if twigs.
Hello, snowwoman.
You are hotter
than you are meant to be.
Are you sweating
out a fever
or succumbing
to Spring?
Either way,
take care
to know
you are no more
contained to land.
When a mind becomes
flooded with thoughts
outside the body,
the ground beneath
your feet, themselves,
their wet shoes and socks,
their toes united
in commiseration;
they all fall down.
Once all ice is melted,
and run off to the seas,
take pride
to know
you helped reshape
the continents.
Shorelines
as round as your face,
as square as your elbow,
as it hailed a bus
some million years ago.
Answer “Yes,”
to one or more of the following questions,
and you may be a martyr:
Do you feel overburdened, overwhelmed, and physically exhausted, most of the time?
Do you feel underappreciated for all that you do?
Is your baggage heavier than everyone else?
You may be a martyr
or, otherwise, one
who has had enough
of walking for today,
and needs to collect
her thoughts,
lest she forget
that no one has yet
drowned by sweat
or a walk in the rain.
Heartlines
Published by Atticus Review at http://atticusreview.org/the-trees-issue/
If I should die before I wake, lay me ‘neath
a tree where lichen grows in whiskers, for I
fell in love with a stubbled chin that trailed
the forest across my collar, up-over my mounds,
and no one was allowed to cut pink slippers, he said,
around here, the Lady is scarce as hen’s teeth
to hear it mark your drums with turpentine, but
did it make sense to recluse into romance, to build
a sound heart for two?
okay poetry 