Reader
called to observe like a guard at a gallery
the art refusing to be quiet
I look over it all and let it go
my books collect time
my mind in good condition
for venturing into the world
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
In good light
On a maple’s pale bark,
a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks
from a wandering snail?
Green islands of moss
beckon across a fluttering sea
of brown leaves.
This cloud-filtered sunlight
is perfect, says the photographer
as her cheeks slowly turn red.
Initiation
Let him continue
in the ground, he
who is now dead,
where all things hurry—
a strange company
who seem to speak.
Let the pursers and clerks
make up their accounts,
the parson rest, and
the great night come
to sit with night.
Sensei
My teacher resembles a flightless bird:
the sky, to him, is an open book
written in a foreign tongue,
his enormous eyes are no bigger
than his three stomachs & when
he sticks his head in the sand, it isn’t
to evade the truth but to remember it
by being alone with his terrors.
Oak Apple Gall
Incidental planet, Biblical
metonym for bitterness,
a green anti-fruit filled with air
in citrus-like sections
& harboring a larva at its core.
The oak’s response to a bit
of foreign matter is not
unlike the oyster’s: wall it off
inside a solid tear-drop.
Come fall, it turns red
but doesn’t rot, lapsing instead
into tough brown paper,
a manuscript in the round
that whelps a wasp.
Fairy Bells
Prosartes lanuginosa
Their ringing isn’t obvious;
you need the ear
of an anchorite to find them.
Listen for water tricking under rocks,
a black-throated green warbler’s
five wheezy notes.
Look beneath creased leaves
& zigzag branches
for a bell of quiet yellow-green
that flares into a six-pointed star,
anthers facing outward
around a stout style—
all of which must drop away
to swell the bell’s heir,
a scarlet clapper.
Painted Trillium
Trillium undulatum
Painted lady, late riser,
you rush out of the ground,
get pollinated on the fly
sometimes before
your petals fully open,
so that within one day
after emergence they are
already turning translucent,
your pink makeup fading
as the light-flooded
forest dims to leaf-out.
But that’s your true
element, isn’t it?
The shade.
Even unpollinated
Goldthread
Coptis trifolia
White-lipped anthers
purse & part.
The sturdy styles end in hooks —
it’s not enough to be adhesive.
Nectar pools in the petals’
yellow spoons
above a white dish of sepals,
which shatters in the first hard wind.
This blooming is so early & brief,
the leaves are better known:
like the glossiest strawberry leaves
you’ve ever seen
growing in the least fertile,
most pristine parts of the forest,
far from plow & logger,
Early Meadow-Rue
Thalictrum dioicum
Dioicum: separate houses.
Here the male
& there the female.
Clouds rise from the male plant
& dangle yellow weather.
From the female plant,
ten-fingered hands stretch
in all directions.
Without scent or nectar,
what flying thing will be
their go-between?
There’s only the wind.
But this meadow-rue
has abandoned the meadow,
so it must flower early or
* * *
Morning to evening; half a day lost,
staring out the window apone a green meadow.
I wanted to know just one true thing
about my very own soul,
but left in thought and now -
2-inchs of snow lay
on that once green meadow.
Where did I go? How long did I
seek out for you?, who would never leave me,
my very own witness, my here.
Gun
being sad doesn't mean I will cry,
and
being happy doesn't mean I will smile,
because having a gun doesn't mean I'll shoot.
Night
It was a beautiful summer night
That lead me down to the rivers edge
To test the temperature of the water
It told me stories with it's flowing noise
That seemed to comfort my beating heart
Tranquil was the surface that spoke to my soul
Reflecting the stars in it's smooth surface
I thought for a moment I could rest in peace
In the gaze of the sky watching over me
A moment so brief that it could have just been a shadow
I thought for a moment that I could have just blinked
The amazing beauty held before my very eyes
Even with it dark it was still such a sight
The color as dark as an ink is black
All void of nothingness but beautiful even still
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: