Saturday, September 17, 2011

Rust

"You need a new wheelbarrow," my neighbor remarks
watching me trundle my shallow, rusting
cart to the curb, orphaned limbs and sticks
protruding like morning hair fresh
from an unmade bed.  "I've a better one
that a friend brought for our yard sale."

I'm not impressed.  He doesn't know that when
I lift the handles, the weight shifts
from my hands to those of my father sleeping
beneath the debris of a Missouri winter.
He doesn't know that this handcart
carries the fragments of my mind, the tributes

housed in the rubbish of winters turned
to spring, similes and metaphors waiting
the right poem, fractured lines
of hyperbole and hope, alliterative alleys
of childhood discards.  How could he see
beyond rust, the sonnet reclaimed? 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Jeremiahs All

In almond trees and boiling pots, the word
            of poetry finds it womb.
From the imperceptible breath
            of photosynthesis, carbon
dioxide and water mystically melded,
            oxygen generated, released.
The heat of growth breathes and bubbles
            in the cauldron of creation.
Cool winters dream the seeds, fruit
            releases from its pulpy uterus
like water escaping from a cylinder in vapor.

It's the transformation that calls us,
            the energy ignited in changed
molecules, the sudden event we neither
            perceive nor understand.
God brushes our mouths with finger tips
            transfiguring halting words
into language of nuts and stews,
            roiling and frothing,
the initiation of thought and idea
            making us Jeremiahs released
from the paralysis of infantile speech.