Oct 15
Sometimes they help with the stories; really, they do.
Even as they’re pure distraction, to rest and pleasure the eyes
for as long as their season lasts,
as long as they are rich and luscious,
and emit from within a plush and regal depth,
every petal sumptuous, every stamen and pistil
glamorous in the infolding fibonacci wound so tight
three dimensions cannot contain their splendor.
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.
Sep 5
The color’s right, but
I’m not persuaded these can be crabby apples,
half the size of grapes.
White with yellow pollen curls, one shy bee.
White and golden pollen.
Pale butter yellow, minutes from finishing.
Halloween orange and pollen gold.
Softly spikey, opening for business.
Spiral down and out, dusted from the day’s work.
A table treat, just beyond my screen,
table treasure cut.
Meanwhile, in the grass, sign of summer’s end,
previews colors to come.
Before color photography, this is how flowers looked.
Before colors.
I’m glad to live in the days of color.
Great gladness.
Even with tans and grays we can distinguish a thousands shade, so many more than fifty.
Millions is still better fun, eyeball ice cream.
Nearer my glad.
Reds and yellows.
Golden rose.
Love these fellows.
True colors.
What is the opposite of butter?
Inverse?
And gray is the new green?
Contrapositive.
I think some camera control options are meant to be left alone.
Pink, after.
No. That’s scary. My tool box is red and it’s bright sun outside.
A writer`s toolbox.
Ah, outside. Much better. Sunshine and flowers.
Liatris.
And clutching and clambering about the blossoms, the big speckled butterfly does his business.
Swallowtail at work.
From the top, with a blue streak up the middle.
It’s pollination all day long, from the flower’s point of view.
Swallowtail, the dark side.
The bees are also leaving footprints everywhere.
But they’re not feeding, they’re collecting.
Bees knees.
And this lady better head home while she can still fly.
Pollen sacs are filling fast.
Saddle bags.
Not a camera trick: the green leaf is red when the sun shoots through.
Opaque green/gray when top lit.
Red through.
How we rock, when there have been too many colors to contemplate.
Rocking corner.
Or back indoors, on the other side of the one-way mirror.
The witness has self-interrogated, -charged, -convicted.
Sentence pending.
Inside the grand circle of mountain ridges, inside the circle of trees that ring the grass, an abundance of pretty little things.
Beneath the ironwood tree, a fungal family up-reach through the ivy.
Marching order.
But at each center of the tanish, beigeish disks, a spot of blue.
Blue, why blue?
Our snake this week was a third the length, a quarter the girth, a fiftieth the mass of last week’s blacksnake.
A little garter garden guarder.
Two foot of pure, well, snake.
Looking both ways, tongue forked and flicking, smelling me.
Forked tongue tiny.
Between the snake and the tomatoes a pile of brush.
What’s not to lich?
Digesting slowly.
Glad to be coral, in full rut; as shameless, if a bit more delicate, than a baboon’s butt.
Gladolia, hereabouts.
Garden guarders, like the garter, may be verygolds.
Don’t stare directly at the fractals.
So nearly stepped on, just inside the kitchen door, a chevron,
an inch and a quarter, weirdly well drafted.
Joan of Arc’s shield?
Not impressive as a flyer, kind of a stumble flutter.
Fearless symmetry.
But eclipses my poor powers.
