Tag: nature

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I don’t trust the wind; she’s loved me like this before


 

I took a lover once; he sewed me to his spine, 

Neither round his girth, nor over his shoulder

Could I see the world he traveled far from me.

His sacred numbers blessed our holy hands,

One cradling his mane, the other locking mine.

Back then…

Lovers and landlords favored rent over poetry,

I, never the sort to drift far, the lair’s lure strong,

Offering dusty shadows beamed in dirty panes,

True love writ on a paw or whisker, soft-shuffled,

Whence the divan bearing swans sunk infinitely.
 

Image source: 

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Palms


My velvet summer leaf, I beg you cup my cheeks with layered sheaths,

And obey you, please me so to please you so.

Your waxy shield melts to my hands.

One caress and the sun is yours for the air making.

Sleep inside my pores, arresting palms shaking trees.

Noose a summer’s dream inside your viny paw.

And whisper green song to the tune of daylight pause.

Make yourself a bed of light and hide us, lovers in noon-tide sheets.

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Gemini’s Shit Storm


She says my moon’s in Gemini; I’m in for a shit storm as the planets configure. 

My gut gurgles, “true.”  

Storms a’ brewin’, 

a slanted wind tossing Bazooka bubble gum wrappers and wooden popsicle sticks across

the stoop of my youth.

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Windward blows the dead awake; shredded zombies moan skyward cries. Stand ready.

Leeward gusts settle upon soot-trodden lace and rusted pipe, 

like predictable night crowning the inexplicable horizon.

There’s no way to tell, so breathe through the crackling wires’ electric veins.

Tear it down, board it up, and blame the weather.

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Poised on the cliff, each steps cautiously, blind-seeking gripped edges, rocky shards of granite rubble, 

a death slide or eternal flight.

A cat agilely climbs the dresser stairs with jaws in machine gun chomp, aching past windowed perils.

She studies her predator’s patio glance back.

Coyote snouts flick-sniff, scuttling to flashed fear beneath orange trees and wicker tables.

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Storm’s a brewin’. 

Pleistocene gassy beams once pocked the scarred heavens, now snuffed shut, 

too, the wind tilts mountains pebble by pebble. 

Lighthouse rays pierce the retinal fog, a grainy lightning chop of insight.

We’re all just kicking up some dust before we bite. 

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Friday’s Ten

Image Source

 

You give me ten, I said to her, and I’ll show you blue corn stalks 

bent at the waist spying on wet larvae writhing in raw earth bleeding mud, 

conjure up emerald-studded Gucci sunglasses’ shattered templates along the highway. 

I’ll paint the vines growing over sacrificial ruins in Tenochtitlan 

where snakes gulp pigs in jaws detached at the hinges. 

Ever see the black ice that skids mango school buses with barely a wheel’s turn? 

It grows atop lanes frayed at the edges with stony tar, rusty nails, and powdered glass. 

Don’t fall in a ditch, or the black rats’ll strangle you purple 

I heard the old man tell the boy on his knee. 

Quick sand isn’t a movie myth carved of convenient climax. 

And cornflowers dot the meadow almost azure not the Iowan June-wheat sun’s tapestry. 

It’s only when she’s waved goodbye and disappears through the gates 

do I smell the clinging scent of honey oil dipped in sea float above 

the rippling hem of my cotton laced wrap. 

She taps my shoulders at an arm’s reach to say, “Hey.”

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Up from all fours (ten for today)

January 3, 2017
 
Peeling back the layers, easy as waxy adhesive pleasingly pulled back from a band-aid strip, you might find underneath

the muffled amniotic sound of my mother’s fear, my father’s absence,

and her mother’s lung cancer, his two pack a day habit, 

her father’s leukemia, his brother’s stomach cancer,

my sister’s jealousy, me, smack dab in the middle, ordered 

induced, long-labored, lost virginity to a lie,

adolescent somnambulant, anesthetized

plucked peak, poised, cut in half, abandoned childhood

love, anger, pain, salty wounds and tears, trials

errors, risks and high cliff jumps, all of it, all of the skin’s striata.

 
And yet, and yet, still, it’s the new year, and 

I’m dressed in the same uniform, repressed ire,

suppressed desire, tempered expectations, doubt

longing, trust, fomenting flames, and churning torrential inward glances.

I’ve heard my ancestors’ voices mute, in a gesture, a turn,

phrases never uttered, lovingly eked from un-warmed fingers tapping. 

Beneath the eviscerated bowels, below the libido, homonidae snapping heads aside, 

peer over their shoulders, wide-eyed, and slack jawed, unsuspecting 

after all, for who would have known, how could she predict, she just up from all 

fours, awaiting death-birth, a notion less cerebral than pelvic, yet 

surely her demise and liberation? No, her gaze reveals she never conceived, never saw me coming.

 

ape-monkey/pixabay

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Sky Diving

The sky and sea run parallel, or so it seems.                    Sky

Contiguous, at least, as free attachment,

committed only to movement and time.

 
While the sea chuckles in currents

as the day and nighttime shifts

clasp her–as does the sky–

she buoys who lap her up

or swallows them down, 

floating or drowning,

life-giving or taking; 

Yet he hovers his 

companion there–

free-fall suspended–

in shallow-air support.

She who risks his domain

will surely succumb, sink below

surface silhouettes traveling rippled

rivulet toe tips, riding her once-in-a-lifetime.                      Sea

  

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Urban Jungle: Poem 18


Artwork-by-Kevin-Peterson-9

 
Urban jungle, yes literally, not metaphorically,
 
though maybe more like a ghetto forest.
 
Leading the determined coalition, is one sleek fox,
 
low lying, white tipped tail, like a log on legs.
 
Following fellow fox is great black bear, also
 
in forceful forward motion, head level, purpose
 
in his gait and onward gaze, alongside the girl.
 
She, decked in tartan plaid skirt, red cap
 
and sweater, strides along friend bear
 
among the graffiti’d concrete landscape
 
peppered with spare thin trees, once patterned
 
for park pleasure seekers and outdoor fun.
 
In ruins now, no one in the neighborhood
 
respects the land, so the conservationists
 
have taken up extreme measures for the cause:
 
the children and the animals, who will inherit
 
the earth when the mature of the human species
 
go extinct, march forth to the city council meeting
 
to state their peace: “Who will speak for the trees
 
and the bees before they’re completely gone?”

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Moody Tree: Poem 12


Your name means mountain ebony,
a certain Bauhinia,
common to coastal California,
but I call you moody.
You own my front yard,
dominate passages and pathways,
burgeoning weight of verdure or
leafy reaches for spider’s webby catch to
neighboring anchors–rose bush branch or
car parked side mirrors.
How you please my wispy-boned mother braked still,
the dog leashed to the wheel chair,
under a relenting shade,
cooling an afternoon zephyr.
In spring or autumn, sometimes winter too,
you boom-blossom burbling orchids,
delicate pink and purple hazy bells
that sometimes ring in summer too.
That’s when your leaves burst butterfly hearts
of hunter green fringed in lemon-lime edges, a
hovering, healthy, verdant vibrancy.
But on any given week without reason,
your leaves brown at the edges,
then all the way through,
baring skeletal bramble
like bones of the cancerous,
exposed,
radiated,
burnt
for the winter–or summer complaint,
marring the yard, baring the hidden wreckage behind you.
That’s when the pods hang dry in rusts and reds, seeds
to bake or burst, sturdy uterine drip packets,
like dry, pea pod icicle tears crying,
yet unyielding to the grip.
And the next week,
they’re gone,
replaced by the brilliant buds as
poking penile plants peek through tightly tubed petals,
orchid splendor,
the softer side on a misty Monday.
Until Tuesday.
When the mood strikes.
Which outfit to wear for today?

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Travel Meanderings


A yellow school bus slices open a wide swath of chaparral, the road it travels invisible to the distant traveler, me, him and them. We travel north til nearly the northeastern edge of the state, destination Davis soccer tournament. Mounds of tomatoes peek above the semi’s trailer, slowly steaming along this blanched roadway from heat, oil, dust and wind. 

Passing telephone poles look like cemetery markers, wired crucifixes, testament to scorched lives and anonymous death. 

Stockdale Highway in one mile, roadway to The Tule Elk State Reserve and CSU Bakersfield. Never far from a Jack in the Box and Subway at a gas station, even when the surrounding desert flecked with patches of green, low lying crops of indecipherable genus paint the landscape endless. Astonishing that this waterless wasteland harbors any life: bleached rock and sand. But there they are, tiny patches of great pines and firs engulfing secluded ranch homes visible from the highway, a contrast forest green to the sage, amber and tans of the desert floor.

A glance at a blur-by motel housekeeper outside the door of a room leaning upon her cleaning supply cart, seemingly hinged on the highway’s terrace, checking her phone. Who texts her at work? Who stays at this hotel in the midst of nowhere?
 
Long green corn stalks half grown, foreshadowing the kernel largesse to follow in a month’s time when seeking the sun’s vigor–sustenance–the sturdy stalks stretch open to the sky 8, 9 and 10 feet tall, or so it seems.
 
The hay tractor kicks up the dust as it slowly rounds the corner of a field’s dirt pathway, and of course, he has to say it, “Hay!” Hominem of humor on repeat. Now I know I am on a road trip. That and the question, “How far are we?” To which we reply in unison, “Half way.” No matter where we are, we are half way. That is our tradition–to torment further our restless children, now adults, or nearly so.
 
The almond trees. I’m not sure why they pique curiosity in me: Where did Christo install his umbrellas? Was it in the Grapevine or somewhere past Bakersfield? I tell my students the latter when we read Dillard’s essay about the stunt pilot who renders the air art in shredded ribbons of lines drawn and dissipated. 

Lost Hills Paso Robles sign reminds me of the trip we made in the 90s to the Central California wineries. The two-lane highway dips and dives through hilly tree covered expanses ranches tuck into. We found our dream ranch home hidden just off this little traveled wending way.

San Francisco is 238 miles away. She wants to go to school there. She and her teammate traveling with us plan to attend SFSU. Or prepare to by attending the JC there. Far away enough to inhabit her styled rebellion and independence but still an hour’s plane ride for safety net parents.
 
Romas on the side of the road arranged like marbles readied for the game do not look like they fell off a truck so much as were placed there, a peculiar sight.
 
Low lying shrubs dot the clean shaven desert floor in tans and ecrus. Twisselman Road. Spell check tried mightily to fight that last road name. 

Heather lined highway, peppered with sage colored brambles and bushes, blonde dirt, sticks, twigs and tumbleweeds every where halved by the steel girded dividing rails. C.R. England semi sidling by. Slower traffic to the right. We travel the passing line a bit just like the other California drivers. Except we know better. They probably do too. Some of them–with impunity.
I tease, “You think you’re thug coming all the way from Huntington Beach? Oh wait, you were actually born in Fountain Valley. Oh, you bad.” I laugh.
She pipes up in a flash, “I’d kick your ass even if I came all the way from Belmont Shores!” Her friend and teammate spits her water in laughter. Some of it splashes on my face turned to my opponent in the rear most bench in the van.

Coalinga Canal, near Fresno. Trucks parked, their cargo brimming over in red roma ripened in stark contrast to the surrounding dessert. A dairy farm, dismal to witness and inhale. The heat, dung, lethargy, exposure and pollution overwhelm the senses. Factory farming. 

A burst of Gerber daisies or black eyed Susans flash by, a couple dozen in a row, brightening the heather in sun bursts. Card board boxes fallen from some speeding vehicle mar the steady stream of browns and tans, sage and hunter greens. We swerve. He’s typing on his phone. “Do you want me to drive?” No. Apologetic and slightly defensive.

A faraway lover professes sweet adoration in my memory chewing upon the scenery. Warmth in the desert.

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The Art of Lovers’ Lessons Learned


A lover once taught me shapes of fair, fragile snowflakes,

Their pockets of space designing mass and configuration

As much as frozen rain mists, cloud-fallen and drifting.
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Another one telescoped me the distance and size of stars,

Colored me planetary pictures of rings and ovals, spheres

In spotty galaxies smudged by gaseous gems on sky maps.
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One modeled his lessons to me in structured time slots,

Configured inside meetings and lunch, clocking out hour

And over-time pay shifts, allowances for home absence.
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And yet another, this one, schooled me in the art of love,

A rare calligraphy of swirling letters adorning words in

Poems and stories that beat true passion into thick skin.
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All of these and more have lent a lesson to have and hold

By imagery water-colored on silk screen partitions placed

Between my heart and ribs, thighs and brain, sculpting me.

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