Love-in-a-mist, and a poem

You Thought My Mouth Your Remedy

You thought my mouth your remedy.

Well, the world survives even kisses

& tears & comes again to its own

birthday in a blur of white

The hyacinths are open, those sugared

flowers, star pillared

& temporary & the crocuses

licked with flames. Oh yes, I was shaken.

But it’s worth it, living

to watch these hills again

with my clear eyes, to see

the once-mated birds come back

all along the branches

I thought it was death, the dark

wood, but look: everywhere

These spinning Catherine wheels

this sexual present, petal

& stamen, unwrapped so perfectly

(yes, the flowers, although they are very much Catherine wheels, and are named the devil-in-hiding as well, are far from being the poem's hyacinths. But we take botanic license in my region. The photo is by my daughter, at the edge of the parking lot garden.)

a rose is a rose

This is an experiment, totally, in my young crones learn how to do new things effort. Daughter took the photo of one of my favorite roses (it is a David Austin rose, Teasing Georgia). Let's see if I can make the photo appear here. You know...it looks as if this might work. What fun! The rosebush is part of my parking-lot garden (and sometime I may link to my post about that).

Waiting For Spring in the Continued World

I have been thinking, brother, of the white peonies

that bloomed that spring our mother died

a ragged splendor along the boundary line

having survived so many hard winters

& being green fires, green bonfires at midsummer

despite the North Dakota storms, holding their own

electricity & stubbornness. Not, you understand

that they are symbolic, or anything more

than their own growing miracle, under which

sometimes the smallest birds sheltered

& other things as briefly defenseless.

They were beautiful. We did not own them

especially at the end, while the hospital

machines shuddered, while the lights went out

& the clear hearts broke open.

(some notes to this: it was published a few years back in Boulevard. I felt like tossing it here now, because I have just passed the day which brought about the writing of this poem.
Won't be long before my mother's birthday, when my brothers and sister in law and I gathered in a North Dakota cemetary to gently place my mother in her grave. Yeah, my partner has always complained all my poetry dwells on death and/or love. Well, gosh, those are the pivotal points of the universe.) I wrote a bit about my mother on my other blog, here.

another poem

Thinking about the post I last made in my outside the windows blog, about Eden, made me consider how many poems I wrote over the years involving those miscarried children.
The one below appeared years ago in Yankee magazine, out of New England, before they ended their poetry page, much to the regret of the lovely editor (who lived, pardoxically, in southern California). And to my regret as well.

The princess in the lost forest

Late spring rain.
The two children of my house
watch at the windows
stir the cats, read books

full of bright pictures:
monkeys & peacocks, other
children with the sunlight in their arms
impossible animals, dragons of snow

or wind, bears dressed for tea
the princess in the lost forest.
Sometimes we turn the pages
together, their heads gold & gold

leaning toward my arms
& they ask about endings &
ever after or where in the woods
the goblins might still live

The third, who was like rain in my fingers
never tugs at my hand
or frightens the cats
She sits very still under her cover of earth

& no one names her.