Several Pleasures

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several Pleasures

 

 

 

I've never found anything perfect

except a flower once that never died.

It swiveled in the sun's slow swing

slept in snow, woke for the Bride

in spring, plush and wild each year from

drinking sky.

 

I've never had anything last

except that flying summer of love for light

where children briefly burned their hungry fear;

that spark became the wildfire of my life.

Its living fire keeps me whole tonight

protected from the winter-walking years.

I've never had a dime I didn't spend

except the gold we minted for love's pay.

Spendthrifts can lose a fortune in a day,

yet keep it all in a sun-vault of a safe

with two last coins for final fare on eyes

that see their dreams at last without disguise.

 

 

 

 

 December 2021

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Narcissus 'Sir Winston Churchill' © joyannjones 2014

Dancing couple, featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969. © Jim Marshall Photography LLC  Fair Use

 

The Foresters

[SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE FOR THE FRIDAY 55]

The Foresters

We gathered wood for

a winter we'd never see;

not to keep others warm

but so each stiff tree's arm

yielding to the saw with a whistling sigh

would sketch a rune of twigs, a ghosted fire

to magic into being our desire.

We gathered fuel against a

north-blown frost, thin-sliver shavings

to take the match of want

to a bed of coals where we'd transmuted lie,

fuel for the flame as the flames rose high

from our wedding pyre,

ash on the smoke-rise snapping in the sky.

We tore that chainsaw through a scrub-oak sea, 

worked wedge and maul ignorant of what bleeds

at the quick mistake, at what would fall, 

gathering sticks

for a hearth we'd never be,

any more than the promise

of saw-dusted seed,

the marriage in the trees

dropped unburied in the broken green.

June 2017

A reboot of an oldie never blogged, 

 a twist on Monday's theme of culture and nature

posted for earthweal's Open Link

Images: The Wood Sawyers, 1850-52, by Jean-Francois Millet  manipulated    Public Domain

Landscape with Stump, 1892, by Ivan Shiskin      manipulated                       Public Domain

Covered

Covered

Love is a secret

until its told

and then it's blown

away into night

Love is a secret

that winds two tight

until its unrolled.

What good is an owner

instead of a lover,

what good is forever

if there's never another?

Better a secret

alive, than dead cover.

~April 2014

Image: Rayograph--The Kiss, by Man Ray, 1922
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org