Post – Page 31 – BEFORE I FORGET

17/02/201623/02/2016

Stoic Garden

No tree says flowering is better
than bearing fruit, just lovers, who embrace
the faith we belong to homo sapiens,
that nostalgic species, the one which takes
the egotism of dying for its own,
longing for perfect flowers and fruit.
Like hummingbirds, themselves deciduous
leaves which perish if trapped in airlessness,
they flit from one lush shrub to another,
sucking at salvia and drooping fushia,
drones darting off to persist, if at all,
in retinal afterglow, green for red,
absence for the flutter of a wing,
a heartbeat for a spasm.

***
Babcock peach blossom at sunset on 16 Feb 2016 – the first of the new year in Orange County.

< Beauty is the Memory of the Flesh

08/02/201610/02/2016

Insomnia at Forty Below

After tossing and turning I cloak up
and step into the other larger room
outside, where frangible branches, glassy
garage and garbage cans have been chisled
from the brittle substance of algid air.
I take the crusted foot path towards the light
bulb inadvertently left on, its fragile
filament projecting a sallow cone
across the desolation of the yard.
But my boot crunch stays the mute implosion
of fir boughs and snow and the curtain swirls
of the aurora above, inertia
with a smell of its own. My senses seize
this scene sustained by sound from emptiness.

***
<The Skin of Things

***
Thought I would publish this most wintery of my poems, since I am off to Winnipeg for a week, which starts with the vernissage of Prairie Fire 36,4, wherein I propose a few translations from the Franco-Manitoban poet Paul Savoie.