Skip to main content

Bonus Poem: I Wonder, Mountaineer

How does one end up
In a house on the trembling edge,
Breathing in the mountain air?

How do you, stranger in a strange land,
Decide this paradise is the one to throw
Your blanket down on in the grass

And smell the sweet lavender
While it reaches out its royal arms
Toward you, tenderly?

Did you smell the dankness
Of the city first? Or were you born
On that fresh mountaintop,

Skiboots strapped on shortly
After diapers? I wonder about your place
In the sun and wonder if you've ever seen

Oceantide in the evening,
Foaming up on the soft-sanded shore
While the sea turtles scurry in head-first?

And I wonder if you've ever known
Five lanes of traffic, or swampy flatlands,
Or desert thirst and the miracle of cactus.

Mountaineer, you are a force of curiosity,
Barreling through my thoughts as I drive
Back to the dankness, to the five lanes

You've never needed, to the people
You may never meet. And I leave you
To the rocks and the trees of Heaven on Earth.

And I wonder if I could have the strength
To sit in that silence, in the lavender's arms
And not wonder about the ocean foam.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bonus Poem: Peonies in a Paper Bag

Out of the earth, stems cut, And into the glass. A spectacle, a marvel, A reminder of the Outside, placed inside. They dazzled for days And then one by one They drooped, stooped over the Cold, round edge of the Vase, reaching for the door. And she said, "It's time, These must go. They might delight a few more Days, but no! Look at this Single one limping. They must Go." And into that brown bag They were buried, without ceremony Or song, amid napkins and other plastic Horribles. And that's how I found them. Heartbroken, Ruffled like goose feathers, Waiting to be taken out Again. To feel the air, Even if it would be among The dead and uncompostables, let their feathers Rest back into the earth They were clipped from. "Let us wilt in the place We call home," they said. And I just wanted to caress One - its soft, pink goose feathers - And tell it that it was the Most beautiful thing I had Seen all day. The most beautiful refuse,...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Ghostly Surveillance for Floccinaucinihilpilification

Sound asleep Or so I thought, Until right then when I was brought awake and shaken, Stirred. It was like cold lightning, A chilling surprise When I saw a phantasm Before my eyes. An austere spectre Gazing at me Reached into my bleary soul, Addressing and assessing all of All that was me. And in a second It fused with the all, the all of me. Part to whole, we were all, My being became synecdoche. It was like a paramour Inside me, incandescent, searching, Finding all the chinks In my soul-china. “I got that one From my mother's mother,” I told it, wearily. Years had passed, maybe twenty. It stopped looking at the pieces Shelved on my life-hutch. This ghost dug in deeper, Like a tick with pride. It grabbed the wheel. Swerving this way, Veering that, looking For all my alley cats now. It found the reigns Inside my bones And cantered toward That softer place. That space where struggle Comes to rest And in me that vision It said its prayers...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bonus Poem: Look Up!

Looking down, I read the priceless pages, Someone else, sweetly, precisely, Had written their drinkable life on. And I drank in the appreciation Of her words, one sentence at a time, A good, fresh white. Sensational, the clouds were Pouring in, filling my cup,  Easing in, with a soft voice that said, "Look up!" My eyes glanced, only peeking At first, toward the sky. Those rain-bringers harnessing My irises with glee. And as if it had been there All along, the whole long while, A sparrow drifted into the Watercolor before me, soaring. It glided on the currents That were my own world, too. And we shared the view, Him up there, I, eyes lifting further now. And then the wind found itself Playing in the cottonwood's hair. And I smiled, thinking About how good it probably felt, Those wind-fingers, sifting through. 
Post a Comment
Read more