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.
Sep 24
Colors just happen in the fall.
Abundance of don’t-forget-to-touch-mes,
but calming now, no longer explosive.
Truth, beauty, decay.
Sumac works through orange
into its final reds.
Spent and pulling back, residue of bloom.
Quiet all summer, the chimney rose seizes the day.
Still just a scatter, it’s early days.
Weeds are flowers
you don’t have to cultivate.
Sometimes the best colors
aren’t hardly colors at all.
Jul 31
The tall flowers, all at once.
![IMG_20160716_121834238[1]](https://03175fb.netsolhost.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IMG_20160716_1218342381.jpg)
A rose leaning languorously on the wire.
Everything is full out.
The day lilies go
on
and on
in an almost silly abundance.
Hydrangea row
shows no signs of slacking off
in any of the varieties.
On and on.
The timid little flowers in the rail pot have filled out.
The under story is at maximum,
from the ground reaching up among the low branches of the trees,
all the little weeds, all the middle weeds, all the giant weeds.
And this, of course, is the first sign of the end of summer
the fullness before the finish.
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
Apr 24
Here and there, the business of spring getting done.
New arbor for the remote rose,
replacing the rotting and crumbled wooden slats
with a mosaic firefly top.
The glassy glint from the gravel under foot,
was a thumb-sized hunk of mica
that sheared into a hundred pieces at a touch.
The older bloom of the kitchen amaryllis.
The new bloom.
Little violets in the grass, in patches here and there.
The queen of weeds, ruling a million sister blooms.
Plum gnarly.
Several human spirits are trapped under the bark,
rather lumpy spirits.
The first hard frost is the real end, and that could be weeks.
But all the flowering plants prepare their final bursts.
Many are done already, a few will hang on until their petals freeze.
The chimley rose saved the best for last.
Since staked up, a mowing near fatality.
No more blooms to come, but we’re going out grand.
Will even a frost take down the lemony mint from its summer-long peak?
But the gatekeeper of the herb garden does not care about seasons.
A hunk of cloudy quartz shares some faces with other entities
but marks the gatepost without concern for any of us.
Nor rain nor sleet nor hail — never mind, it’s quite all right.
I’ll just stand here and watch y’all wilt and wither one more time.
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.
