First hot day
Huge tulip poplars
holding tiny leaves to the light,
each with its four incisors—
the sun doesn’t stand a chance.
Already it’s staging a sunset
on the back of my neck
as I crouch down
to puzzle over the maze of roads
on a yellow morel.
Poems on the topic: sun
Poems on the topic “sun” on Poets.by.
Earth Day
The sun comes out
in the middle of a shower,
too high for a rainbow—
unless you imagine
the bird’s-eye view:
rainbow against the ground
and off to the side,
the radiant field lines
of this magnet, Earth…
Blue-headed vireo
The soft notes
of a blue-headed vireo
lure me away from my desk.
Night’s dust on my glasses
turns to a veil of gauze
in the noon-time sun.
The stench of manure
wafts up from the valley.
The vireo snatches insects from the air.
Herbaceous
Goatweed goatweed how you brighten
my waste places with your yellow stars
blossoming in the deep space between
my shoulder blades, where the sun’s
too weak to rise. Like any lover
you make me dizzy and anxious, I can’t
get it up any more and you play
badly with other medicines, such as
dust and pillbugs. Call me a shaman
fundamentalist, but my dry bones
have never felt more possessed of life.
In the otherworld I’m growing a green husk.
Lord of Misrule
In her image the sun made me
round and ornately petaled,
burning and erupting
in feathery plumes. Don’t stare!
I was the Sun King.
Shadows radiated away from me
like the teeth of my enemies
strung on a reckless necklace.
That’s not a mugger’s knife
but a prisoner of earth’s desperate attempt
to pick my lock. I was, after all,
the state. Why must I now perform
for the forgotten and forgettable?
Why have I not limped like a blimp
into the humped clouds? I can’t seem
to shake this legacy of lead,
Love is always present
My eyes could not see it
My ears could not hear it
My fingers could not touch it
But I knew it was there
The same way you know the sun will rise again
The way winter will melt into spring
The way the wave will always beat on the sand
Because even if something is not evident
It is still there
Lurking in the shadows
Of pride
Of ego
Of distance
But all of these things can be overcome
If you allow it
For even though
Sun Shines Brightly
The evening was full of surprises.
Sunshine had a brighter, merrier tinge
Streets were full of decent men
And every woman looked beautiful.
Signals turned green at my very sight
Youngsters gave way, most obliging.
The fishmonger gave a couple free
The coffee tasted so good.
At the corner shop, I read out
A letter in English
To the unlettered worker
Who listened joyfully, as I told him
His daughter will be home for X’mas.
Passing, slowly, I saw me
In the glass panes -
A happy, smiling, me.
Where the Desert Sleeps
I knew the miles
before the markers, I found the west
by walking with the sun. I said,
there are lizards in my blood,
there is sandstone in my teeth.
I said, I am the light's daughter,
I am a cactus wren.
This is my home among the thorns.
I said to trees, to starlight,
I said to graves and streets and men,
and you said,
Girlchild, I live too far out in the desert.
I whispered into corners, I wove into
papyrus: I am the light's daughter,
I am a cactus wren,
I raised my hand from lifetimes of loving,
Warmth
It leaves me in the morning and returns at night.
Sometimes pleasant, other times unwelcome.
It loves the sun but resents how bright.
It takes away my soul, when darkness beckons.
Sometimes returning it as I wake.
Sometimes keeping it until the next day.
The next week.
The next year.
It wasn't coming back.
Haiku 20
Pen clenched in left hand,
bent over her sudoku…
our train cools down.
To grandmother and
grandfather, his tattoo, but
I don’t ask him why.
Two umbrellas hung
from the guard tower railing,
not needed today.
Balloon flowers,
available in two shades;
grade-school commuters.
Ducks greet the sunrise
I hear them but don’t see them
as they plan their day.
I put down my book
Haiku 19
She rolls up her dress
blue flowers over boxers
near the Black Muslim.
At ninety-one, how
many other naps has she
taken in sunlight?
The floor, worn away
into grimacing profiles,
into continents.
The fly seeks the sun,
never getting through the screen
last week of July.
Her hair, purple waves
over a determined stare,
guitar on her back.
The terns flap southeast
Haiku 13
What is this concrete,
such gravel, steel, that rebar
against the dead stars?
Small plane overhead
and a worn van’s chittering
usher out the sun
Empty ice-cream pint
in this, I’ve cultivated
exactly one ant.
Atop dinosaurs
we prance; who can say what, shall
caper over us?
Just gone to purple
the upper sky through my blinds
pale blue over West.
I begin putting
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