Note: My thanks to Lola Koundakjian for following.

Close to Home

The falling palm-
Like leaves

Of the wild
Fig tree

Coming to rest
Near the abandoned

Shed

In which sparrows
Are flittering

To find shelter
For winter,

Turn slowly
Yellow-gold

As the autumn
Sun that dips

Lower each day
Over the earth

Under the eaves
That decline

Enough to admit them.


(First published in Poetry Salzburg Review #11, Spring 2007.)


Note: Speaking of fig trees, William Michaelian has a gem of a poem (Time Piece) ticking away at his blog.

Regimen against Ennui

I know this sounds trite but

Before you call it just
Another day,

Leave two galvanized
Pails full of water

Under the stars,
Then hit the hay.

*

Get up

At the crack of dawn,
Go straightaway out

And

As you watch the stars
Being washed away,

Empty the pails in turn over
Your still numb stark-naked body.

You are now clearly
And fully ready

To greet a brand-new day.




Thanks to William Michaelian for linking to my blog, for his never-failing daily posts which help to make my day, and for his helping me with html tags.

Aurally

Never--

Hardly had he said it
When the wind said it

Again.


(First published in Poetry Salzburg Review #11,Spring 2007

Variations on a Theme by Williams

"There are lots of things we have to go and find out.
We have to go and find out, what red, what wheel
and barrow are, at some level." -- Paul Muldoon
 
perhaps this is why

so much depends
upon

the glazed over rimed
blue

eyes of the stricken
farmer in the muck

beside the dazed 
white chickens,

the frozen up-
ended

wheel of the red
barrow, the fouled

mind gone plowing
somewhere down

in the lowermost reaches
of ground zero.

Form Is Nothing More Than an Extension of Content

Of the mind,

Of the spineless forms
That wend their way through

The spiny needles
Of the mind.

.

Of the pine,

And the mindless
Wind that penetrates

The spine.

Crepuscular

It sounds like that
Repulsive, creepy-crawly

Feeling's overtaken you again--
A caterpillar's treading, flexing

Its luminous pulsating muscles
On the curve of your wrist--

Your pulse is being taken
By twilight again.


(First published in Poetry Salzburg Review #11, Spring 2007)