girl in blue

spring wind
the little girl shivers
in her thrift-store sweater

darkness

power outage
the moon slips
into the sink

spring dinner
flecks of cilantro
on his Hawaiian shirt

sometimes grease is beautiful

sudden rainbow
around
her rusting hull

summer storm-
the yellow crayon
worn down to a stub

a bag of lemons

as the twilight
descends
as only twilight can
I
melancholy again;
my heart the same
shade of purple
and translucent as
outside
Then
you appear from
behind the screen door
you have been in the yard
your skin
flushed from the
sun that was
and you put down
in front of me, on the wooden floor
a hardy brown-paper sack
and show me
it's filled with
lemons-
ripe, incandescent, fruit of the sun
and that is it.
Between the back of your neck
and looking
at these lemons
my heart trips
back into
the light

~Eva Trudeau

Red Scarf

The red scarf
still hangs over the chairback.
In its folds, like a perfume
that cannot be quite remembered,
inconceivable before

~Jane Hirshfield

driving through Nevada

desert dusk-
pieces of the day moon
smudged off

a child of the universe

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

From Desiderata, Max Ehrmann

Years

childhood home-
even the For Sale sign
rusted now

february 4 clear and windy

I saw a dust devil this morning,
doing a dance with veils of cornshucks
in front of an empty farmhouse,
a magical thing, and I remembered
walking the beans in hot midsummer,
how we'd see one swirling toward us
over the field, a spiral of flying leaves
forty or fifty feet high, clear as a glass
of cold water just out of reach,
and we'd drop our hoes and run to catch it,
shouting and laughing, hurdling the beans,
and if one of us was fast enough,
and lucky, he'd run along inside the funnel,
where the air was strangely cool and still,
the soul and center of the thing,
the genie who swirls out of the bottle,
eager to grant one wish to each of us.
I had a hundred thousand wishes then.

~from Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks.
Love the last line.

indeed

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

from Wallace Stevens.

poem

The Chinese girl in the waiting-room of the busy railway station
writing on a pad
in columns
as if she were adding figures
instead of words -
words in blue ink
that look like small flowers
stylized into squares:
she is planting a small private garden.

-- Charles Reznikoff

View

morning window
a contrail passes-
through the blinds

One of the great joys of life is having a desk that faces a big window. Many times a day, I see a contrail slipping from slat to slat in my Venetian blinds.
Sky, sun, plane, cloud.
Ah.

fruit moon

Nadie come naranjas
bajo la luna llena.
Es preciso comer
fruta verde y helada.

or
Nobody eats oranges
under the full moon.
One must eat a fruit
that is green and cold.

From The Moon Rising by Federico Garcia Lorca.
The moon and the fruit jumped out at me here. This is why one must learn Spanish. Besides Neruda.
I'm going to Madrid.

shades

still life--
she colors the rusted bucket
purple

the first sign

one purple crocus

beneath

the hanging tyre

not Spring yet

flea market
old lady sells peppermint tea
in plastic cups

yesterday

april lunch ~
the heat of a jalapeno
under the rain

J and I ate at a Mexican place that had rows of bar-style seats in its chilly little brick basement. Above my head, a cactus plant on a shelf and a strange-looking doll with a placard that said "El Salvador."
I poured more and more hot sauce on my food. Above us, it poured.

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~William Stafford

Scheherazade

how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.

~from Scheherazade, Richard Siken

Ninth Elegy

Maybe we're here only to say: house,
bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window
— at most, pillar, tower... but to say them, remember,
oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves
never dreamed of existing so intensely.

~From the Ninth Elegy, Rilke