Seedling

Seedling

Leaves start off on the tree

and end up in the air

and along the street

Actually the leaves begin
somewhere inside the tree

Inside the seedling

from sunlight and air

Another curious fact is
the voice is only hosted
by the body

Say it exits
not as speech
but as song

That song began
where

Cave-Dark

Cave-Dark

I’ve always been responsible
for that darkness.

It’s the Sylvester to my Tweety bird,
only harmless.

You know what’s in there.
Nope, not spiders.

Not teeth. You can hide in it.
All the hider’s

got to do is trust it. It’s an if-you-
build-it-they-

will-come. It’s an all-things-changed-
after-that-day.

Fever

Fever

I have set myself adrift on a river.
I have built the river.

Because I have not slept
I think it is raining
from the upper sky to the middle sky

but never reaching me.

If the self were
symptom,

an inner tube inflated,

where is the mouth
that let the rubber nozzle
drink from its breath.

I wrench something from the ground
but say
look what the world is bringing to me.

There’s Always a Stump

There’s Always a Stump

Cut away a tree,
saw at its torso
and haul it off.

But it is still not gone.

There’s a stump
to deal with.

Underneath, roots reaching
down and away.

All this time
the tree was always
walking away from us
secretly.

There are birds that remember
the bark of the tree
under their toes.

There are descendants
of the birds.

There is the repositioned earth
that never lays quite right.

Fruitful and Multiplying

(a fragment from an essay-in-progress)

“Strange fruit.” A teenage boy looked out the window of the full bus, and announced this, as you might point out landmarks that we pass (“My sister took a guitar lesson there once,” or “Best pancakes in the city”). A few of the bus passengers looked over, and then noticed the earbuds trailing out from under his hood, leading into his pocket. Plugged in.

In this order, I thought:

• He is listening to Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves,” which samples Billie Holiday’s song.
   
• He is singing along with Kanye West but really he is singing along with Billie Holiday,
   
• Billie Holliday’s song borrows its lyrics from a poem.
   
• In the bus it is 1930 and 2013.

***
Fun to share something completely unfinished with you today--happy Friday! What projects are you starting/working on (or abandoning for the weekend)?