Orchid Dance

Orchids dance across the paper,
green silk arms around each other,
moving to some music we don’t hear.

Small cattleyas in their party colors,
handiwork of hybrid growers’ dreams —
Miss red-orange with purple lip
nodding with her sisters,
sweet lavender with violet,
and snowy bridal white
overtaking little mustard
with her thin magenta throat —

all surprises from this palette
where I dip to find the pigments
to splash across their rhumba beat
of joy.

New Rain

Sky a mellow gray,
a train whining as it goes,
and I wonder what to write.

This will be a day of calm,
wounded coming back on planes
to questionable conditions
in Veteran’s Hospitals.
What worse than loss
of legs and eyes, but damaged
brains, hidden in the skull,
not to be examined,
overlooked by military doctors
until too late, and more troops
are sent to the endless war.

The train is gone, the sky
still gray, and passing tires
are whining in new rain.

When the Tree Comes Down

On New Year’s Day
or some day later,
reluctant to move on in time,
we clutter the room with empty boxes —

those marked with black felt-tip pens,
crooked letters scrawled to label:
“shiny bells”, “twinkle stars”,
“golden garlands”, “silvry icicles” —
hesitant to pack away the glitter

of this brief respite:
The Holy Christmas Time,
now forced to face
thin naked trees across blank skies,
gray days to come,
oursleves.

Gallant Eagles

Gallant eagles on your nest
eighty feet up in the sycamore,

you take turns warming
three cloud-white eggs

day and night, even
in early April snowstorms

after soft gray eaglets hatch
you carefully protect them,

both parents feeding bits of trout
from the cold stream below.

You wear your white helmets with
a confidence most parents envy.

       Based on viewing the live camera at Bald Eagle nest, Decorah, Iowa

      Published in Seeding the Snow, Winter, 2011

Graffiti in Tunisia: Merci Facebook
A Pantoum

When his fruit cart was confiscated
he lit himself in gasoline,
police deprived him of a living,
no chance for work in Sidi Bouzid.

When he lit himself in gasoline:
Mohammed Bouazizi became the martyr,
no chance for work in Sidi Bouzid,
as in all towns, even Tunis.

Mohammed Bouazizi became the martyr,
sending flames through Arab lands,
through all towns, even Tunis—
their despot fled across the sands

sending flames through Arab lands.
By Facebook, word spread of liberation,
urging despots to flee across the sands
in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen.

By Facebook, word spread of liberation,
tyrants had deprived them of a living
in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen,
ignited when his cart was confiscated.

        This poem won first prize from CURRENT in Ann Arbor, July 2011

Taking Merton’s Path

This moving away
from the world,
this moving inside
somewhere near
the center, to hold onto
God
is one way,
but avoidance,

then one day
in the clatter
of the world
God enters in,
tells me She is in
my heart — the quiet
which has been
growing there is God,

the One who takes
me by the hand
into the tumult,
to be there without
noise, without distress,
with new compassion.

Mime

Like the mime
he shapes his peace,
moving slow

as summer rivers,
between intended pauses.
Across the water

at its edge — that line
parting dense foliage
from the still dark marsh —

this bright streak
steps and stalks,
his graceful “s” neck

stretching to a thin
white line: elusive
great egret

halting me on the path.

Marshes Call

Marshes along the way
call me to come close,
their sunken terrain
rich with growth.

It’s sound that stops me,
peeping and singing,
songs breaking silence
of its sister woods.

I envy the trees
standing here all day,
their curled arms
reaching in grace

accompanied by
this steady sheet
of music.

Words Leave

Words leave
like years
lifting into nowhere,
and I reach up
to grab them,
to touch memories
of childhood,
or last year,
but like air,
nothing’s there.

Some days words
do swim about
in my head,
but with the lead
of my pencil
they won’t fall
onto paper,
end up crouching
into corners,
as if dead.

Could it be,
as one told me,
that hanging all my paintings,
hosting all those cousins,
and holding my
new lover in my arms
could have poured
me full of happy,

to the point where words,
those dancing little darlings,
shed their ballet-slippers,
tiptoed to the shadows,
folded arms about them
for a rest?

Come, words!
I’ll play some music,
a little silver CD
of soft lilting piano,
or spicy, rowdy jazz;
I’ll spin the disk
till dots of notes
tap your head like rain,
wake you from your quiet dream,

whirl you once again into
chorus lines of rhythm,
that spill onto the dance floor
of my poems.