Gardeners and Sailors

Sisters swinging
sharing stories of gardeners and sailors.
Here, in high hammocks, rock Helios and Selene,
Perched upon pendulums
the Horae brushing their hair
while humming mortal laments.
Those verses that skies catch
those etched upon a spinning orb
it releases

little prayers like a gas
adrift from the surface

a broken-clay terrain upon which erected monuments—materials masculated,
strain to reach at the sky
appearing as time pieces to the Horae.

They look onto Helsinki today.

Helios elates herself watching scurrying
the collecting of sassafras.
Little buckets of harvests glint gold in tufts of
dust and bramble.
She traces the sewn lines with her sparkling fingertips
appointing gardener grid-makers to chart her brightness;
to thank her with a hand upon their brow
as they squint at the sky.

She yawns at the long day of work
at the shovels plunged into the cool dirt
to rest upright
and releases herself upon them
outstretching warmth
that cascades in iridescent white gold.

It is love-making when she releases herself to the gardener.

Selene, still looked fixedly to the shores of Helsinki,
admiring the building of little vehicles
along the waters edge.
The Baltic is always in her clutches,
it moves two and fro
to the echoes of her laughter.
She watched her singular ship
let it ride into the darkness
as she poured from a whistling teapot
a silken white strip of light
to guide them.

The more she watched, she began to caress herself
as though her cloud-composed skin
were as the ocean
moving all over her.
Excitement she laughed clamorously
stirring like drift wood thrown through crashing waves.

It got away with her
the pleasure of her movements
and a wave was torn over her coveted ship
with all its crew pointing their faces
at the starry sky like a field of flowers.

She scrambled to part these waves
with her breath
finding only the empty vehicle
bobbing in the waves.

Her wailing remorse now stirs the skies
as dark blue clouds converge over the settling ocean
lean white light no longer draws across the water
and the night becomes very still.

Sisters comfort and recline
seeking respite in the tender embrace of the Horae;
for despite their dominion the day is done
and time goes on and songs are sung:

To touch these mortal lives
the Horae hum,
is to pleasure oneself in fleeting delight.

An Explanation of Mag-Big, Second Attempt:

1. Splendor in the yellow sweet
dripping peach. Perfect, momentary.
Soil down, and up
white silhouettes—bugs through beams.

2. Whispering, “please, oh please” to air
or something fear cannot unbind
and if it hears a desperate plea, it is listening.

3. Intoxication because in the moments before
hitting the water
Icarus smiles at the sun.

4. Animal love.

5. The song that understands and how it seduces
over and over
until it is a lover we cannot be with
any longer.

6. A lighthouse casting a shivering slice
through undulating fog;
the mariner catching it in a glass sphere.

7. Pages and pages of crumbling yellowed words
my grandmother at eighteen
believes in crackling radio broadcasts.

8. The lover, how he stretches, and in his slumber
rests his hand upon the breast.
Now becomes tempered by certain impermanence.
Still, his dreams are a Grecian urn preserving her.

9. When dying words are unselfish,
such as,
“try to be happy,” or “smile, my love.”

10. When trees creak
like whale songs,
it becomes certain that without ears
the forest is still a symphony.

11. Awaking to snow
how it covers churning streets with impenetrable silence
and we play, for the first time in years.

12. The painter, how he cannot stop
with birds and feathers
plumage plucked from the wing of an osprey.
He considers himself from birds eye view.

The Adulteress

She has learned how to
endlessly wait
drawing his presence
from residuals
in linen, buried secrets.

She loafs and answers
and by her own suggestion
doesn't ask.

She is unconditioned
and admires intoxication, how
we free ourselves
in me minutes before we fall.

unfinished about funnels

tunneling for channels in paneled funnels
[air gets in. same air is breath.]
funnels on fingertips and tips of tongues
and rumbling drums [those are ears]

the funnels in holes make small the big
and shoot out small as big like trumpets.

firing off funnel tipped wires with senses
like chemicals through the mill

tirelessly churning, always gathering
little bits no larger than a firefly;
[though despite being little, the firefly
steals your dreams and buzzes god's buzz-- they say].

tiny cargo traveling in bolts

(to be continued...)

6 "word" memoir

composition notebook

hallelujah

red

hatchet

oregon

early-bird

dream farewell

she told me last night
that the beetles were gone.
she tried to see where they went,
blinded, squinting at the sun.

as i gaze at the distance
the mile-high window
admonishes the light
blinding. inpenetrable.

i wonder where they could be.
and if she's lost her faith.
her faith in me.

i bet her love for the world.
but i believe i will return.