Hemlocks

National Park Service warning: beware of uppity trees. A silly poem.

This is what happens when nothing resembling a real poem is on the horizon. At least I’m in the company of trees. This was scheduled for today weeks ago.

                          Hemlocks

         When the wind has died down
                  and the tide is full,
             when the boats are all in
                and the harbor is still,
          then the shoreline hemlocks
             can see themselves best.

        Gazing down at their reflection,
          they can admire the breadth
                 of their lower boughs
                   and marvel at both
                 the downward reach
            of their graceful branches
             and the upsweeping tips.
            But when a breeze tickles,
        like a feather along the surface,
           blurring their mirrored twin,
                   they are outraged.
              Because once you have
                 glimpsed perfection
                  nothing else will do.

                    How is it possible 
             that we were not warned
             of the vanity of hemlocks?
                    Granted, they are
               deliriously beautiful but
        next to them sits the red spruce,
          a rare beauty in her own right
and she seems to manage herself quite well,
       as does the maple, biding her time.
                     Behind all of them,
         well away from the water’s edge,
                stands a family of birch,
                      any one of them
              a veritable showstopper.
                   With gleaming bark
                even after closing time,
               yellow leaning fall leaves
               and that beguiling quiver,
               infinitely better firewood,
               and you don’t hear them
               simpering on about their
                 magical winking eyes!

                   Honestly hemlocks,
               take yourselves in hand
                and get a goddam grip
           on the proper order of things!

                          Swans-9/23

and then this happened yesterday…

                      At Long Last

Too much coffee feels like burned mud
           in the back of my throat.
            It resides like a residue,
unwelcome.  I have been wearied lately,
   by words compressed into too small
       a space, with the lines cramped
          by narrow borders or worse,
          an extreme density of words
 crushed within a pinhead of acreage.
I need more elbow room, my imagination
has become too dulled by this desiccated
            bouillon.  Somebody, please
       hand me a glass, a very tall glass
           of water and then back away,
                   items may expand.

            This crowding is intolerable. 
              What is on the other side
     of prose? Is it prosaic, is it prosody?
           I'll bet it's roomier than here.
                    What is the name
         for unbridled verbiage and can
              we arrive within one leap,
                  no visas, no borders?
         Are there any messages worth
              hearing when the bearer
              spews words exactly like
                    a sewage pipe?
           Surely there must be gems
     to be culled. Can we polish a turd?
           Even that sight is too close,
      too tightly wound, distilled as it is.

          I would like to see the firehose
   of the world, with the valve wide open
          loosing a cannonade of water,
       a fountain jetting high into the sky
                 to fall upon the earth
                   and we are all here,
     parched by (so many) scant words
 with a great thirst upon us for someone,
   anyone, to quench our burning throats
                        at long last.

        Yesterday-Fayetteville, Arkansas

I have been writing nothing but stories and essays these past couple

weeks since poetry had deserted me. My mind just needed to flow

with full, easy rolling sentences. They are about the early years of

carpentry. They are fun to do, therapeutic. They’ll show up here sometime.