seeds, leaves, lights.

{elm helicopters, in the park on my way home...}

Here are some poem fragments (some fragments more fragmenty than others) to accompany these illuminated leaves. Not sure what the poem-bits will do next, but they will bask in the sunshine right now.

* * *

how light soothes madness:

all winter i left the candles burning, my sad tallow brain
melting slowly all over the kitchen floor;

but now the sun comes, leaves me fluid, slush running
in the streets slick with the rainbow sheen of oil

& in the muddy gutter winter left a wind-torn lost mitten
dead pigeon yellowed skeleton going to dust

but i pool curbside, a flowing laugh, reflecting elm
branches rooted in blue sky,

the geese flying home calling:
echoing over the gravelly riverbank, the silty delta

shines back all that light & the constant
beyond us

* * *

{leafy parchments, in the river valley when there was still snow}

* * *

how light wakes the earth,
presses its fingers down through
melting snow & coaxes

those young bulb-flowers
pushing up waxy beaks
through dead leaf-lids, her eyes
now open & thirsting at the sun;

how light washes our faces,
each ray like a sweet wafer
on our tongues

& this is what saves us:
(this communion)

its strong hands part strands
of despairing, this something
that exists regardless; how this
earth (for)gives.

* * *

{old wild rose stems, in the river valley a few weeks ago as well}

* * *

you don’t have to tell me;
i know there is no cure.

bloodsap only lasts for
so long, the marrow going
brittle, & all the sweet syrup dry.

yet somehow there is always
something to soothe the sadness:

your bone-white aspens, the fuzz
of their buds alit, the haloes of catkins,
& above that chaotic hopak of crows;

dry seeds of the elm shake out
the winter, wind’s sussurous, soughing rustle,
translucent parchments shining

over bending red willows, cut branches
in their green shock of brightness,
the simple gift of what saves us –

we twist & ache but
there is always that dark wet earth
with us,

all those seeds springing simply from
the chornozemlya of the heart –

* * *