Kingsbrae 7.1
7 June 2017
Visitors
Bees to flowers,
they come to visit,
their sojourns just as brief.
Hummingbirds hovering,
they push pointed noses
here and there.
How much and what
will they understand?
Perhaps they retain
an impression of raindrops
falling, or dust motes rising
to dance in the sunlight.
Maybe my words
will sting like tiny blackfly
and leave small red bites
that will burn with a wild
itch to hear more words.
Blackfly
Open car door or window:
they whisk in with the wind.
Silent they head for light,
crawling steadily up the inside
surface of the windshield.
If you are quick, you can
catch them now. Kill them
cleanly before they gorge
on your blood, spreading it
thin, your own raspberry jam
blocking your line of sight.
When you exit the car,
you see the killing fields,
blackberry jelly spread
thick on number plates,
dimming your headlights
with dark clots of death.
Comment: We drove down to St. Andrews on Monday and visited Kira and the Kingsbrae Gardens. Such beauty, such a wonderful reception, and the food in the garden café was marvelous. On the way home, the pinging of blackfly against the windshield made us think it was raining. When we got out of the car, headlights, hood, and license plate were covered with thick films of dead flies. We kept doors and windows closed, except for a brief moment at the service station, where we filled up with much more than gas.
Gift
“I have a gift for you,” I said.
“Why?” I had no answer.
Silence built its barriers
between us. “Look,” I said.
“It’s yours.” I held out the book
and she took it in her hands.
“For me?” she asked. “You wrote
this book for me?” “Yes.” The lie
hung in the air for a moment,
a listless, lifeless kite, floating.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her smile
ignited the air, sent sparks across
the space between us. She opened
the book, turned the pages, saw
her name. It was indeed her name,
but she was not the person who bore
that name when I wrote the book.
Rainbow
I dreamed last night
that angels lofted me
skywards and wrapped me
in cotton-wool clouds.
The nearest rainbow
was a helter-skelter
that returned me to earth
where I landed in a pot
of golden sunlight.
Red, gold, and yellow
were my hands and face.
I stood rooted like
an autumn tree covered
in fall foliage with
no trace of winter’s woe.
“May this moment last
forever,” I murmured,
as the rainbow sparkled
and I rejoiced in
my many-colored coat.
It’s Over
The big top’s empty now.
The crowd’s gone home.
The trainer’s put down his whip
and lions and tigers are safely
asleep back in their cages.
Dim are lime and spotlights.
Yellow glow caravan windows
as juggler and clowns wipe
clean their grease paint smiles,
strip off their sequined clothes,
and prepare for bed. One by one,
the lights go out until darkness
rules menagerie and circus.
Only in the heads of little boys
and girls do the dancers still dance,
the ponies still prance, the tamers
still crack their whips and hold up
their chairs to keep wild animals
glued to their perches, while high
above, in the bedroom’s canvas roof
wire walkers strut their stuff, above
white sheets and the safety nets
of Teddy clutched, and mattress.
Ticks
Ticks, as a student, are never to be feared.
They are good for you,
mark your rites of passage,
never catch on your skin
or bite into your beard.
Ticks in the woods creep and crawl,
people really don’t like them at all.
They fall and they climb,
bring diseases like Lyme.
Leeches are bad and suck at your blood.
They swell up with your juices
as you well knew they would.
But leeches don’t kill, as tick bites might.
So get out your tweezers and squish ticks on sight.
Comment: Ticks are about. Watch out for them and be very careful with them. Announcement on CBC Radio, 19 May 2017.
Weird
Weird these words
dropping in inky
drops from pen end
poised above paper:
a variety of poses.
Not for me the key
-board’s voluminous
vocabulary, nor the tap,
tap, tap, fingers on lap
top to search for a word,
an idea, a distraction
just a tap away.
For me, the slow flow
of thought, the clumping
together of the mind’s
pretty litter of ideas
milked slowly, one by
one from a cornucopia:
happy creativity.
Triumphs
Now is the time of minor triumphs:
waking to birdsong in the morning,
making it safely to the bathroom,
shaving without cutting my face,
getting in and out of the shower
with neither a slip nor a fall,
drying those parts of the body
that are now so difficult to reach,
especially between my far-off toes,
pulling my shirt over sticky patches
still damp from the shower,
negotiating each leg of my pants,
tugging the pulleys that permit
my socks to glide onto my feet,
forcing my feet into my shoes,
hobbling to the top of the stairs
and lurching down them, left
then right, one step at a time …
Oppressive-Possessives
TBT1
Teddy Bear Tales 1
“Possessives are oppressive,” my Teddy Bear whispers in my ear. “I’m not your Teddy and you’re neither my owner nor my master. The world exists without you possessing it. It will continue without you. And yes, I hear you, especially when you talk in your sleep. ‘My wife,’ you mutter, ‘my daughter, my flowers, my garden, my lawn, my birds, my bees, my deer, my house, my grounds, my groundhog, my car, my TV, my team, my Teddy.’ Well, permit me to share a secret with you. None of them are yours. You may think you own them, but you don’t.”
“My God …” I sat up in bed and held my Teddy Bear at arm’s length, staring into his button eyes.
“There you go again,” Teddy stared right back at me. “Whatever are you thinking? Those two little words, yours and mine, are a threat to the universe.”
Gardeners
when three bearded men
unbury winter’s bones they pick
at old wood scars dead trees and
their limbs now lying there lifeless
they dig deep at flowerbeds
uprooting a riot of Japanese
Knot Weed untangling roots
all tangled and twisted with
Bees’ Balm and perennials
that stray across borders
unwelcome immigrants neither
barriers nor fences can possibly hold
they probe between flag-
stones where wintering birds
and squirrels and chipmunks
cracked the seeds and wild weeds
that grow there and flourish
but where would the land be
and what would it accomplish
without helping hands
and the power of strong fingers
and fresh eyes that spot those
intruders who diminish
the space where good flowers
grow strong with fresh herbs
chives and oregano basil
and parsley peppermint sweet
crushed beneath feet
Comment: This was the day for Thursday Thoughts, but I don’t have any, save for those in the poem. How does Mother nature manage without us? What is the difference between a weed and a flower? Why do the dandelions dance in my garden and why so many, fresh every spring? What happens when the gardeners no longer garden and nature takes over? Is the wilderness that arrives really a wilderness? The garden that grows, does it really need us? Do we own the land, or does the land own us? The same with development: do we shape the land or does the land shape us? Was the wilderness a wilderness before we arrived? I watch the deer drifting past the trees in the garden. They are so tolerant, so aware of my presence. “Beware of the possessive,” my teddy bear tells me. “I’m not your Teddy and you’re not my master. The world exists without you possessing it. It will continue without you. And yes, I can hear you: ‘my flowers, my garden, my bees and my deer, my house and my grounds, my groundhog and my Teddy.”‘ “My God,” says the Teddy Bear who sits on my bed and hears me snore and watches me dreaming … “Whatever are you thinking?”
rogermoorepoet 