SHOULD THE ABILITY APPEAR

A comment on my post of April 27, from a kindred soul: “…I love the idea of sitting in the sun reading , and often go out with my book—but the pages remain unread as I sit and muse and look and dream—but the book is there should the ability to read outside suddenly appear” —Pauline King

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Should the ability appear, to read outdoors
A book rests open on my lap awaiting here
To take me far from fragrant pine and sycamore
Should the ability appear.

But I am hooked, distracted into now, I fear,
Under the influence of lilac, dreaming on a hellebore,
Holding my breath to hear a bobolink draw near.

I’ve brought a book out in the sun only to ignore
Its poor inked pages while I drink the atmosphere.
I’ll still read other worlds—it’s what the book is for.
Should the ability appear.
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SHOULD THE ABILITY APPEAR

MAPLE YELLOW, MAPLE RED

Maple yellow, maple red, I see
the killing splendor of your canopy
outside my window as I lie abed
gathering this morning’s go-ahead,
whispering this small apostrophe—

how gracefully you ride time’s tyranny
and know exactly how to be a tree,
rubrics never read, sermons unsaid,
maple yellow, maple red.

Soon you will die, to some degree,
turn prickly gray as colors flee;
but you’ll grow back the brights you shed.
This time next year, I may be dead
while you, most likely once again, may be
maple yellow, maple red.
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MAPLE YELLOW, MAPLE RED

DEVELOPMENT

There’s development smell on the breeze,
‘Burbs spreading like a disease:
Bullldozing blokes
Felling maples and oaks
Then naming new streets after trees.

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.DEVELOPMENT

THE PALPABLE OBSCURE

All souls own this evening, love,
blurring borders between quick and dead.
And even if the fearsome moans of man
did not appoint this time as hallowed,
our backyard trees announce it, as they
lose their glory and become their bones.

The veil is at its thinnest now, that
suddenly obscured you and left me
bereft, dumbfounded in the desolately clear.
Once a day, at least, I stop to wonder
where you are.  I do not think of
you as being here.  Except, tonight

a heightening of powers in the darkness
wants to break november from october
with a cold slap and a small wail in the wind.
Something more than me, something much
more sure that you abide, this night, brings
you, in ways that I can almost touch.
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THE PALPABLE OBSCURE