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grandmother knows
grandmother knowshow the picker of plums becomes the orchardoh when the snowmelt was inside her for yearsand in him for years the melted snow floodedthe creeks in his veinsflooded the swollen streams in his arteriesoh she watched him go by the lane from the villageinto bloom among the plum treesand in the icicles that dripped…
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from the mantel where the ticking measures
from the mantel where the ticking measuresthe silence of right nowthis solitude will be measuredwith the clanging of the pendulum on the quarterhour on the half on the hour in synchronicityin perfect harmony with the church bellfrom the steeple in the graveyard’s nearby townwhich chimes the measure of a gopher’slife under a tombstone
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over the thawed soil oom scatters
over the thawed soil oom scattersa new generation of barley seedlike ashes of cremation fallenout of the wind it sinksdown the stages of mudand in the damp loam he intersa new generation of corn seedoom’s a busy undertaker
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ask grandmother
ask grandmotherif she remembers the fields that livedseasoned with stubble before they wereseasoned with the plowthen seasoned with seedthe fields that were still wet with mud out of the womb of winternewborn when the foal was in her kneesand the lamb was in her limbsthe fields that lived inside heras she seeded the commonand the…
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i labour with the season in my spirit
Good morning: I thought I’d share a bit of the evolution of a poem this morning. In the process of drafting this up, I googled images of Early Modern European peasant women: This poem is the composite sketch of those women. The image that’s linked provide the eyes that are translated from the visual to…
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two days to the south
two days to the southamong the crops in the season of the sicklethere are children in the age of sproutingtheir parents mature into the flowering of their summerstheir grandmotherthe white threads of her hair drift backthe stitched hem of her coif wraps a pear frozen browned bruise splotchedwrinkled the linen frames her face
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before it could be read
before it could be readfrom ambassadors’ letters to norway to poland to the emperor everywhere that his nearly old mother’s newly widowed orbefore there’s time for uncle claudius to walkmother gertrude on his arm in the garden to walk ‘til her smile suns through the rain of her tearsand she becomes again beautiful desireable‘til the…
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a dark age it needed
a dark age it neededa military trumpeter to becomea rooster at dawnbefore it began to become an age ofchurch bells in bronze polishedto a glow that clanged in the sun risentown that woke when charlemagnetribe by tribe conqueredthe scattered germaniclights into one great lantern he was crownedemperor of the romansthis is how an imperial day…
Jake's Flea Market 