Sep 2
In summer, everyday, all around the house,
in pots, in beds,
on bushes, climbing trellises,
color explodes.
Full sun,
part shade,
all shade,
the white and yellow
and orange blooms
grab human eyes
and pull in pollinators.
Deep red
and rose
and lavender
explode
then slowly fade.
Pale blue
soft lavender,
down,
darker, to deep violet.
No blessing comes to us
as charmed
as a partner who brings forth flowers.
Jul 1
Early summer’s chromatic abundance,
is everywhere,
in wild exuberance;
somewhere there’s a bleak
landscape of grays and browns
that all the bright colors have been
sucked away from and sent here;
all the shades, all the strategies,
to reach towards the sun
luxuriant unfurling
of flower DNA into petals
presenting their organs of generation
to all pollinators,
come up and see me, right now.
Jun 19
walkabout, this afternoon, to find deep red with busy bee,
pale red with kanji characters,
poppy world full of self,
rising from a bed thought lost,
while yellow bush roses,
and blue fingers, which our maidens know by a grosser name,
showing some purple shared, in the same pot
or shared with satiny iridescence
shimmering around a black hole,
in purple waves
and glitter,
while at rows end, marigold companions
and almost a blooming leaf, twinning stacks climb orthogonally towards sun
and a tannish leaf kind of flowerish
all of which have names that are common
and the uncommon names are all scientific
May 8
Clematis clings and climbs up its arbor
clutching at the chimlee.
Almost … 
… and all the way open.
Azealia bumper bloom this year, in red.
so red,
and pink,
and whatever color this is
from the new bush down the lawn.
Calycanthus has too many common names:
carolina allspice, strawberry-bush,
sweet bubby, sweet betsy, and spicebush.
Money plant is one common name for a dozen little bushes,
mostly succulents,
that produce some sort of coin shape from the flowers.
This version makes translucent papery discs
later in the summer.
Now it’s purely purple blooms.
Cucumber magnolia flowers,
ten feet to sixty up the tree,
the first bloom are big enough for salad.
Another month, big enough to make a dinner plate.
A new-sprouted dahlia, beginning the long climb
up the flower cage.
Comfrey accidentally thriving in its own
little village of native weeds.
A lovely composition to which our contribution
was the not cutting down.
A tortoise can stretch it out, when life depends; but a snail not so much.
Maybe the head of the mushroom grows faster than the snail can run, but how shall she dismount?
Ticket to ride.
Six feet of blacksnake in the grass points to the tree with six bird feeders.
Can he unhinge his jaw enough to swallow a gold finch or a nuthatch?
We used to see whole eggs along the gullet every time we’d relocate the guy half a mile away
who’d returned to rob our chicken coop again.
It took a week to digest his dinner and crawl back.
He discouraged the broody hens better than we could.
Pointing at …
Maybe it isn’t birds. The feeders are a creature magnet, even for rabbits and deer.
It could be squirrels, gray or red or the white-belly fliers (when you fly at night, wear white).
Or ground squirrels or kangaroo mice or Noreegan wharf rats (so far from a wharf, so far from Norway).
All my length.
A couple dozen tree species crowd this brief segment of the ring around the lawn.
The largest temperate rain forest is in Alaska.
I think we’re next: not many steps to fill the leaf book of a fourth-grade science class.
Leaf scape.
A table rose, for company, two feet away this instant.
White, the outside of the petals, inside hot fuchsia, as my love is.
Red, red rose.
The black flower is in the house.
Black velvet.
The red outside.
The thick sticky golden pollen is the same.
Velvet red.
And a little ways into the woods, the Dr. Seuss flowers stretch thin and wide, enticing.
Wood note wild.
Such abundance here, where peace and beauty overflow.
But threats surround us that are imminent—to our earth and food and water and air.
Amid the rumble of half a hundred human wars and war’s alarms,
I know I can’t be young again, but still shall hold her in my arms.
Salaam. Shalom.
