Monthly Archives: October 2017

The seed pods hang like ribbons, my Esperanza:
Yellow bell flowers, clustered and many
Spent all the summer becoming this stanza
Where I pick the seed and marvel at plenty
Over the fences, and into the arroyo and up
Along the ridge, all these hopeful seed pods
Who knows how many will take? Don’t give up
It only takes one green glory rising above sod
One quiet yellow legacy from bean fingers reaching
“Spread me out! Let them be free!” So many die
So many choke or drown or bury, sleeping
Until the weather breaks and a poem rises
I see a flower bloom, in corners, and I know
These distant golden blossoms: I am he that throws

To keep a prisoner is to be in prison
The punisher must stand down in the pain
To hear the wails and pleadings and derisions
And rest at night pretending to be sane
To keep and tell a story is to dwell on pain
Fiction demands misery and uplifting darkness
To live down in it, hold it in the brain;
Is there a monster in the waters of loch ness?
Is there a beast or is it just a murky black?
To hunt the monster is to wish for monsters
To look down at the water and see the lack
where shadows ought to swarm together

We think there is a line, but it’s a story
Who is and who is not and walks in glory

When I hear the mockingbird sing, I sing to her
I mock the mockingbird, then try a new song
If I am clever, and have perturbed upon her
The mockingbird mocks my happy wrong
I don’t trill enough – I don’t whip or whill
I don’t hit the high notes, or low notes or click
The mockingbird’s voice is greater in skill
And breaks my little tune high to the quick
Say I am no songbird, no voice, but say this:
The birds will bring my song to my door
The mockingbird sees me, and offers this kiss
of music; she thinks it a taunt of the poor
The giant she humbles smiles and asks more
Sing all my music back, I want to hear it soar

When we die we rest in a little version of home

Those city dwellers combust in urns and crowds

Or pile their bones in catacombs that rattle loud

where cars drive over the underworld paving stones

Surburbanite, you will lie in a green grass plot

The form and material of your tombstone will be approved

And men will come to mow the grass, and beloved

will lie together yet in separate rooms, as lived as bought

Where I die lay no memorial stone except as trees

I will be as rooted in death as the rootless

who fall in the fields unmourned, but for me

The green of living will sing of my giving; Unless

you hold these rowdy and unnamed places holy,

You don’t hold me: My Legacy, my Ghost Purposes