Write your poem — she told me –
not about a snow storm
but rather a snow flake.
That is how she came to me,
not with blizz and bluster,
fizz and fluster, but soft
and Seleney, floaty, flirty,
melt on my shirty,
crystallined, one of a kind.
Archive for grape
Snowflake
Nine Affirmations for Nine Nine Oh Nine
I will drink nine cups of coffee at nine;
I will plant nine acorns in nine holes
on nine hills;
I will serve nine platters of nine cupcakes
with nine candles;
I will send nine letters to nine editors
on nine serious subjects;
I will tell nine friends nine secrets
in nine languages;
I will feed nine sardines to nine cats
with nine lives;
I will follow the nine commandments
of the god of 729 names;
I will pleasure my ninth lover nine times
at her nine erogenous zones;
I will compose nine songs of celebration
for the eight planets
and Pluto, the cartoon dog.
Song of the Tui (quick first draft)
Imagining the song of the New Zealand Tui bird
from ten thousand miles away is apt work for a poet,
blind cartographer of the wild uncharted places
of the human heart. The English, on first glance,
named you Parson Bird as you are clothed in a dark suit
with a white collar, but no droning sermonizer are you.
Is “tui” the sound you call to the ears of the Maori?
They say you possess two voice boxes — a poet’s envy –
so that your lovely bellbird-like notes are underlain
with clicks, cackles, groans and the creaks of wooden ships
on rolling seas, a concerto for flute and precussion,
and like parrots, the gift of human speech. You sing
to the full moon above the sparkling South Pacific.
Your wings beat loud and crisp like the flapping
of thumbed stiff pages in a new book of poems
or the card sharp’s shuffling that signals the deal.
I see you banking through dark dense forest,
your crest dusted with yellow pollen grains, drunk
on fermented flax nectar and joyful flight and life.
I hear your voice in the tinkling spoon in a cup of tea
of honeybush, cinnamon, cloves, horopito and ginger.
Your song drifts on the gentle morning breeze
off the cool September seas of the Hauraki Gulf,
wending through vineyards and olive groves,
from the beaches to the hilltops, aloft with
the sweet and tender musings of a fanciful mind.
sour grapes
you might not believe this
but when I was a kid
grapes came with seeds
one per grape
red
green
it didn’t matter
as with many things
you had two choices
spit or swallow
i just chewed them up
real good
sweet
and bitter
and swallowed
two
three
four at a time
or for something else to do
i’d peel them first
now the days come
in bunches
and you’re the bitter seed
but I chew
and swallow
seeds
skins
and all
out of habit
too hungry to stop
