Tag: Dying

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Tethering – For Davo

Where do sunflowers turn after dark?
Bereft of fullness & warmth, they train
aimlessly on the plenitude of stars,
lost in the firmament of illusion.
Is a kite free when it snaps its string?
Freedom feels a lot like random tumble.
Tethered to a deft hand, kites sail aloft.
Decoupled, they float in liberty down.
Do blossoms, as they wither, blame the season?
Or do they think it just another night,
decline ascribed  to the absence of light?
And kites, once loose & fluttering down
toward earth, are they ever tempted by
the futile thought of turning back?

***
Davo, for the record, is my Uncle David Lang, whose long career in aeronautics and space engineering has led him to projects which involve tethering, slings and kites. 

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Chaparral Sunset

Day sheds its sheath of light,
the skin of things a wisp,
a wreath, every blade clinging
to the flare once pulsing within.

As shadows climb the hill,
the heavens spin anew.
Caught in their swivel,
a luminous planet or two.

Below thrive thistle, laurel, sage,
manzanita, sumac and rue.
Breeze brushes their gilded
shafts. The dessicated bristles

of their involuted bracts
leave audible scratches
on the silken shroud
of evening’s amber whisper.

***
Even I didn’t realize what this poem was about until I had to read it over a few times to proof it. In The Skin of Things. This is, it has turned out,  the title poem of that sequence.