OPTIONAL POETRY

ii.

Or, say, hearts–
also formed from

compression,
an inward pull,

from longing.
In the stellate

dogwood
a flickering thing,

a hummingbird
filling angles

of fog-white air
with desperate

wing spreads,
hardly effortless

to beat, contract,
to stay aloft,

alive, to not be
dwarfed by

the growing
winter.

i.

The dog’s trot
stiff with sleep,

this morning
creaks, walls

chirring
with heat,

and late last
night I heard

birds inside
the eaves.

Everything
is coming

in now,
receding

from the cold,
forming nests,

or the warm bright
centers of stars.

[Inquiry]

In this brown neglect of a garden
peppers gleam under
a sheen of wax,

warm sunset shades
of orange, fuchsia, red–

resistant, tropical, small
in the hand

and wickedly spicy,
no rat would touch them,

a little bellicosity
a useful trait,

the counterpart
to too much vibrancy,
a swift cure for curiosoity,

as not all
questions are
benign,

especially
this late
in the season.

All the cities went dark, downed trees
cradling parked cars, water pulling
the bridge down to closure.

Lightless, the contours
of the highways grew foreign
and foreboding,

charting black channels
through the island’s core.

But now, this dawn comes
like nothing,

sprightly birds assess
the state of the canopy,

a full ten degrees colder,
smoke tints the air,
all wholesome except

for the limbs that broke
but didn’t fall, the widow
-makers,

the swords of Damocles
holding on for now,

the fresh-snapped pith white
as in white-hot, as in warning,

as in inaction is not
the antithesis of danger–
it is just a prelude of variable length.

Enough of this half-way month,
unable to chose

between borrowing
or giving. Enough of caprice,

don’t even call it whimsy,
and all this talk on

the strange weather
we’ve been having.

Enough of strange weather:
the freak tornado,

lashings of rain
from a high clear sky.

Of volatility.
Let your clouds be

clouds. No more
short hope,

no more
false awakenings,

no less, and
no more, either.

The lake is irritable, it won’t be described,
the more one tries, the slipperier it gets,
and refusing to fly, the gulls are complicit,
or maybe they’re stuck, too, held static
by the wind.

The morning hums.
Muted, it’s unclear how–

another soporific,
with the lingering dark,
the anesthetic fog.

Downtown yesterday
street corners jutted
into sun

but the size
of the hospital
precluded it–

so we walked
in the shadow

on parallel streets
not quite woken

but just below,
with no real desire
for surfacing.

Where is the storm?
The suffused trees clammor.

Three sparrows perch
in the window jamb

and perplexed,
one’s brought

a  white feather,
an offering, for nesting,

or a sign of surrender?
Clouds edge out blue,

the ground still wet
from early showers,

under the eave
a sham shadow.

These double panes
don’t keep out cold,

they’ll shake with thunder
should it happen to show

to lively up these Monday
morning lows.

First thing this morning the first
bridge closed, running late,
and over my shoulder a pocket
of lake, under a scowling sky–

It’s hard to say why or what
has changed, but the flat
glint of skyscrapers through
the downtown corridor
was so real it seemed phony–

not tortuous as that turn of phrase,
but clear and clearly resolute,
a setting set, not buildings I knew,
although they looked just like them.