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[from September, 1999, workshop:]
Extra Blanket
Early autumn nights
filled with night-blooming jasmine
filled with tangy smoke
filled with laughing children
Early autumn nights
hinting of bone cold
hinting of pumpkin pies
hinting of the crunch of snow
All this
while snuggling under the EXTRA blanket
and reading each other erotic poems.
* * * *
[from July 21, 1999:]
Root Cellar
Down below the frost line
In the cool depths of the earth
Where neither summer's
probing fingers
Nor winter's frostbiting breath
has broached
Deep where the dead
rest with the tawdry
remnants of peace
they have wrapped themselves
in for eternity
There the summer's root crops,
shamelessly exposed in their nakedness,
remain forever removed
from the vicissitudes of
the life whirling just five feet above
Red potatoes all snuggled
together in their
battered bushel baskets
Bright orange pumpkins
close, but spaced just so,
like people at a crowded bus stop,
are murmuring in whispers
with the rock walls
They seem content
on their old rough plank boards
separated by blocks
pulled from the old chicken coop
Yellow onions,
chafing in their dry skins,
try to avoid bruises
while gathered together in an old sack
hung from a nail worked into the mortar
Bright orange carrots,
in their five gallon buckets,
packed in sand
to keep them crisp,
hold down the floor
from the unsettling forces below
All this color remains unseen
here in the dark earth
where time is slowed, slowed, slowed
The one true worm hole through space and time
little blobs of last summer's sun
most for food, some to be planted
where they will gather up
next year's sun
But now is the waiting
suspended in the dark and cold
waiting for time to resume
waiting for DNA to replicate
waiting for water to flow
waiting for a heart's beat to quicken
* * * *
[from January 20, 1999:] North Star Each star a rung
the big dipper climbs
from the treeline on the northern horizon
I see so clearly
the snow squeaks
the cold catches the breath
As the nose hairs frost
I follow the rungs
Away from Lawrence Welk
Away from the house lights
Away from the cows
Chewing and chewing so contently
Away from the Saturday bath
For Sunday church
I climb and climb
Till on the top rung
I can feel the earth
Rotating slow, steady
On its eternal course
Then and only then can I go back in.
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