Poem: Sweet Pea, Sweet William (with photos)
For my next poem in the nature series I chose to focus one of my favorite little flowering vines, sweet pea, which grows on the edge of my yard. Besides its peculiar face-like blossom, it’s the plant’s extended blooming season that I enjoy the most. While other flowers have come and died these past months, the sweet pea has held its flowers from late spring until now, the end of...
Read MorePoem: Escape
Here’s the latest poem in my nature series. I’m pretty happy with it, though I can’t promise I won’t fiddle with it some more. Escape If we were the size of crabapples we’d cut our clothes from maple leaves, then laugh, in our green overalls, at the slow caterpillars who chase us, wanting to snack on our pant legs. In the evening, you pluck a flower from the hosta for a...
Read MorePoem: Saturday morning basil
Basil Glow-soaked leaves, Like boats, they bow, pure green and pillowy, cupping the rain in their upside-down bumps. Plucked for the sauce, the soy or mate tomato, their scent is soft until knifed in fine ribbons Under tooth its savor slightly cinnamon, the perfume of roses and geranium. The whiff, bright coriander, the candy of tarragon, its oils tinged citronella, thick laurel and pine. Such a...
Read MorePoem: Back to nature
I love starting a new project. In this case I’ve been taking tons of macro shots of flowers (though, unlike O’Keefe, I see more faces than sexual organs in the petals). My plan it to write at least 20 poems to include with the photos and create a book out of them using self-publishing Web site LuLu.com. Last night I wrote the first one, which I’m pretty sure I’ll use to...
Read MorePoem: It is peace
I’ve been digging up a lot of my poetry from when I was in college, and this one was one of my favorites. I had written it for a small Hiroshima Day ceremony in New Paltz, and it was one of the first poems where I really felt my own voice had emerged. Since then I think I’ve come into that voice, and writing this poem today I would make a fair amount of changes. But I like how raw it...
Read MorePoem: Simple
I wrote this back in college, in a moment of discovery of the value of letting the audience know exactly what you mean. Simple Sunset perched, I dreamed of waking on the moon. Simple like a flower in the Sea of Tranquility. Simple like the farmer’s rain dance. Simple like a song without harmony. Simple like diamonds.
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