8/30: Reckless

Joy is as reckless

as rage: the glad smashing tail

of a golden dog

7/30: Love Poem to the Minor Keys

Songs in minor keys:

The prayers I cannot speak.

You, too, search and never find.

Houses with open windows,

Rivers, not still ponds. 

Prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: Write a love poem to an inanimate object

6/30: Storm Siren

I heard the sirens change from watch to warning

and left to walk  the writhing woods.

How strange to name that shriek a siren.

The air is bottle-green and branches swim,

illusion that I’m steady in a savage sea.

No one else is in these woods now, and I wonder,

from how many masts have I untied myself?

I’m overboard again. The storm’s the siren song

beneath the deep green waters of our times,

the restless forward sideways outward movement we

hear wailing in our heads in moments of tranquility.

First line borrowed from an anecdote told by Ashley Baines.

5/30: Rufous Hummingbird #2

Swaggering

Gem-jawed thief
Armor-plated honey-tongue 
Chirrup chirrup tzee
Chirr whirr heckle jab 
Hum thrumm bee 

4/30: After a Drought in Texas

Waken from a thick sleep to a sound 

you can’t remember. Listen: dissecting  

noises in the night: tick, drip, sigh, creak, swish,
rattle, drummm. Syrup-slow, the memory:

thunder and your red tin roof. 

RAIN. 

Your sheet’s still poised midair, a giant wing, 

by the time your feet hit floor. Your brother’s 

feet are thrumming down the stairs, sliding

hiss around the corner landing. He’s left

the front door open. The mineral smell

fills you before you’re even off the porch.

Slap barefoot down the steps, one-two, staring

to the far-off streetlight, where rain glitters

orange in a cone beneath. Quicksilver

on your eyelashes, nightgown clinging

to your hips, you dance with your brother

through the rain, mouths open, laughing, drunk,

really expecting to hear the earth sigh.

The tops of the trees perform with you

the wet green shimmy in the wet green air.

Drought’s over. Who cares how far til morning.

3/30: Warrior (Rufous Hummingbird #1)

Dawn. The warrior rises from his nest,

ties round his throat

chainmaille of fish scales

and admires himself in the birdbath.

Fire glints from his wings

as he drives before him

the helpless throngs of gnats

and midges. They perish above

the smooth lawns of suburbia.

The tuberose are trumpets

proclaiming his triumph.

He sups their sweet nectars.

No one will challenge his sword.

Even the chipmunks tremble.

for Marilyn

Here's a silly little poem about rufous hummingbirds. They're tiny and flashy and fierce, and I adore them.  Thanks to All About Birds for educating me so I could completely fabricate stuff about fish scales.

2/30: Common

You were a crescendo
                                of epiphanies
                a high mark, a far goal
You were
                                exhausting.

After you,
                the urge to be common.
                       pork rinds and Family Feud
                       mouthfuls of expletives
                       margins of red ink
                       one-night stands
               loving my babies
                               more than anyone else’s.

After you,
                    merely, only,
just.