Where all the flowers have gone
the ought-to-have-been couple
raw and pretty to see together
gain a year’s distance
he hit her
that former wit
now well married to a war
Poemas sobre el tema: flower
Poemas sobre el tema «flower» en Poets.by.
Fortunes
i put a single stem
of beebalm – bright
red shaggy head – in
a green, wide-
bottomed wine
bottle & set
it outside to see if
the hummingbirds
would come
the first summer crickets
playing their rasps
pick right up where
they left off at
the intermission,
going on as if
this brief stage
Replacement worker
scab employed till I bled
a little too much
I have no company now
led a little too much
but I love serving the best
flowers in my garden
Broom
A girl took a broom to bed—
he looked like a fine gentleman.
His gold, old flower was a garden
where there had been many rains.
Simón Zopeloxochitl de Texcoco
The hummingbird of day has yielded
to the hummingbird of night.
With a single pair of feathers on his head
he flies on wings of mica
& finds his way with eyes
of yellow quartz.
Unlike his daytime cousin
he doesn’t do battle:
summer nights are short.
Flowers uncurl after sunset just for him.
Pry open the tight
bud of his thorax,
searching out the heart to eat for courage,
& you won’t find
anything that beats:
a maze of dry husks filled with moonlight.
Prophet without honor
I preach the winter
coming on, the thorn in life.
A black flower went to
my Valentine—
we were merry and broke.
Naturalist
In my cold boots
I come to a field
and a vineyard
and a garden:
no flowers.
Back to the fen
in which I found
all things.
Sinking Valley
we climbed down
to the birthplace of water
bloodroot
wild ginger
sang
roots stretched into crevasses
limestoned voices
inaudible over
the gasp & suck
a scum of flotsam in the gullet
we crouched in the sun
blood-colored flowers
whitewater curling back
& back we prayed
for a rain of calcium
another sky opened
Fossilized
All day in amber,
I promise the aster
some air
for prayer.
Goldenrod Time
the meadow at dawn
gives birth to ghosts:
slow dancers of fog
beneath a crescent moon
that’s just been deserted
by its entourage of stars
the goldenrod’s dark gold
mellows to yellow
a whole 30-acre bowl of it
between wooded ridges
where the sun comes
as a parishioner
among the monarchs
and the green darners
and later the lopper
with its steel grin
* * *
Deep in the woods, a small sun-starved blueberry bush is having its best year ever: it produced a flower for the first time—a perfect yellow bell!—and a forest bumblebee with pollen on her feet found its nectar. Now the green berry swells.
What bird will find it when it assumes the color of the sky? How far might its seeds travel? That’s how suddenly the future can change on you.
forest floor
striped with shadows
swallowtail
The Hollow (38)
fallen cucumbertree
the white undersides
of its leaves
roots lost their grip
on the saturated slope
seed pods still clenched
leaf duff undotted
by any black cherries
rained out
that mob of red trilliums
melted away
foam in the stream