“T’aint easy sweetie” she said drolly. “Tryin’ to hang on and let go at the same time.” Her voice was tinged with salt chips and her long legs propped up on the kitchen table. The farmhouse windows looked out onto a horizon of grass and garden. It had been a spring day turned abruptly into summer longing.
bourbon with wild mint
before dusk disappears
a sudden downpour
ag ~ 2014
No Other Song
Now that you passed
never to walk your beloved beach
again in this lifetime
I wish I could say that gulls
cried out for you
or that the waves ebbed
longer than usual.
Or even that a storm brewed
on the day you decided to leave
but I cannot –
that would do you an injustice
in fact it would negate
the real beauty that you
were able to poet so well.
You knew that the gulls
could be a nuisance now and again
that weathered beach pilings
smell of creosote
the tide obeys no one
and the receding sea
fades to infinite shades of gray.
It does not matter
now that you have gone
the gulls still raucously stake their turf
or silently glide over waves
a rise and fall in measure
to the beat of no other song
than that of another day.
ag ~ 2014
Oh to live in a garden
where fancy flowers bloom
and are merry neighbors
with the weeds and wild ones.
Oh what fun
their chatter over and under
the picket fence
that listens in too.
Oh what a joy
to know that all
are welcome to play
and rest easy.
The breeze that bellows
the rain that floods
ivy that itches
and pollen that sneezes.
Nesting birds and those
on summer sabbatical
insects that fly and flutter
crawl and pierce.
Fox and raccoon
snakes and snails
a bear ambling for honey
in the hive that hums.
Walking barefoot
is essential and lying down
to sky-gaze through treetops
is a prayer.
Oh what grace to visit
such a garden
on a lovely Spring morning
or on the windowsill of your heart.
Baleful Blues
Sometimes it creeps in
between the sheets
other times on the arm of a trombone
the longing
bluesy and boozy or
fireside and crackling sober.
It leads into
Van Gogh’s blue bedroom
with the walls and floorboards
all askew and naked
assumptions of sanity.
There in his room
Vincent felt it too.
Waxing Twilight
I feel the sap
rise in my body –
after all it’s Spring.
Or is it the rum
making me feel warmer
than the bedding sun
that I imagine slips away
under the sheets
into the embrace
of a waiting lover.
I like to think that
the moon and stars
are made of flesh
and blood
lust and longing.
Or is it that
we are made
of sap and starlight
forgetting our own
dawn and radiance.
What difference
does it really make
when I fall in love
so easily
anyway.
