Friday, May 7, 2010

Strange to See Where

Strange to See Where

Strange to see where things land
once loosed, unhanded.

Leaves can plummet or travel,
carried by their own lack of mass.

A swath of purple flowers
along one side of the highway,

thick and bright as a stripe
of paint. Paint, for that matter,

one whole wall wet, and
drops of white freckling a cheek,

pulled up by the underside
of a shoe and tracked out the door.

Sand in the car’s upholstery
a year after the beach. A wobbly

pine seedling planted decades ago
solidly unfolding, growing, and

from its wingspan needles falling
to form a decomposing alphabet.

3 comments

  1. I have flecks of sand from last weeks trip to the beach. I feel sort of sad that I separated the sand from the beach and yet it is lovely to have the little bit of an unintentional souvenir to remind me.

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  2. "falling
    to form a decomposing alphabet"

    Poetic, this. Our backyard is full of pine needle droppings and little fluffy bits of pine stuff (what is the correct term for these things?). As much as I curse them in the sweeping up, they are organic, they are part of the fabric of our neighborhood. I shouldn't curse them; I should praise them.

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  3. The total effect of this poem, for me, is a contemplation of where things end up, and why. It makes you think of random bits of this and that, all connected. It's all one big landscape, our world.

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