SYNTAX

"Poplars" by Monet

SYNTAX

across the pond stood
a paragraph of trees
punctuated by commas
of birds resting there
just long enough
to make me pause

THE SASSAFRAS LEAF

THE SASSAFRAS LEAF

A leaf all full of sassafras,
Floated without a sound onto the grass,
Then, quickly wafted onto a stone,
To sit there and think all alone.

I am big and yellow, the leaf thought,
But, it was something else that she sought,
To be something useful was her desire,
A thing that would encourage or inspire.

But, alas, no revelations came to her,
No ideas or imaginings began to stir,
So sadly, she let go of her dream,
She didn’t plan and she didn’t scheme.

Look, Mom, called a little voice,
This leaf is lucky – it has a choice,
It can be a mitten to warm a hand,
Or a big fat turkey living off the land.

The leaf felt the touch of a boy’s love,
As he picked up the yellow mitten glove,
Then turned the leaf on its other side,
And gobbled for the turkey there fat and wide.

The boy showed the leaf to his dad,
Who tried on the mitten, then gobbled like mad,
The child and his parents laughed with glee,
At the big yellow leaf from the sassafras tree.

The boy pressed the leaf all by himself,
And placed it carefully on a shelf,
And there he kept it all winter long,
Now that’s the end of this autumn song.

But, if you please, just one more word,
In case you find this poem absurd,
Oh, remember those days of childhood play,
When imagination ruled the day!

MISSING VINCENT

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

MISSING VINCENT


When I saw you in Paris in the spring of ‘87
your eyes were yellow-green and steady.


Your head was made up of short, broken strokes
of carrot color hair, styled like my father’s.


You were surprisingly neat. I noticed that
your blue cravat matched the buttons


on your jacket. Even in detached Paris,
you were emotionally motivated.


Your compassion for toil-worn souls
was still apparent. Even though your


palette was light and airy then,
I knew that your heart still belonged


to those who ate potatoes
in the semi-darkness.

WORDS

WORDS

What can I say to you
that has not already
been revealed in these tiles,
scattered in magnetic profusion
on the face of my cold, flat life?

Honestly, if I could write to you
without words - I’d do it.

What words can give you back that morning,
when you ran to the top of the mountain
to see a red tail hawk resting in a chestnut tree.
Yes, I saw you running, your hair
a silky river streaming behind you.

If I had words to send you, I would want
you to swallow them like a tonic,
because I know, they would be potent.

But my words lay hidden, like onionskin eggs
placed in cold clumps of new, spring grass –
wizened eggs, petrified now,
in their waiting to be found and counted.

Back when our days belonged only to us,
my lips gave the trees permission to whisper
our names to the larks winging overhead.

And now,
now a silence of words gathers at the rim of
my life and prevents me from saying all those
things that I should have said years and years ago.

Words…
written, spoken,
lost, broken.

ETERNAL

ETERNAL

The first fire of day
catches in the corner
of a gray November sky,
as winter trees bristle
on the spine of the mountain,
like hair on the back of
an angry dog.

I turn my face
to the ancient wind
and listen.
I hear the young ones singing.
I hear the old ones wailing.
I hear their voices telling me
something…something.

SPINNING ON ONE'S OWN AXIS

Art work by Picasso

SPINNING ON ONE’S OWN AXIS

Like smoke from the
leaves of autumn burning,
my thoughts stratify over
the fields in thick
layers of contemplation.

Only the sound of my voice,
calling out my own name,
cuts through the miasma
and swirls crazily upward,

where it splinters into a
thousand words that shard
down into the ears of the deaf,
echoing like an insidious litany.

Go home now.
It’s too late.
I can’t help you.