Organic Poems

At the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
When the wall is a wordless blank,
He stepped into the hailstorm
In a slice of concentration
Because the hail ricocheted off lemontrees.



The first warm day,
And by midafternoon
Something is calling to me.
The grass leans this way and that in discussion
The smell of the earth floods over the roads.
The wind’s an old man
Beginning to turn in the sun.
His ear is thick with fur and silence.
When swallows fly low, skimming the earth,
He’ll sit there pretending to read.



The moon in the window
So sure of its life
That it peacefully opens its wings.
The winter night curves round the legs of the trees
They are old lovers and know love starts gently.
You can feel the great joy of the trees
Flashing like storms in the picture window,
Like the sparks of redwing blackbirds,
As unexpected as a tulip.
The moon covers her eyes with a cloud.
How simple, how perfect it seems: the darkness.
Now there is nothing to see.
My life is a moon
In the frail blue branches
Of my veins
The blue, high altitude hallway of age.