The lake luxuriates in deep infinity
Pigéage
so low my fruit heavy bearing your light bare feet piercing me with high heels
Manners
Beauty before doubt
Maintenance
I left my apartment windows open — I am wild that way — and the rainstorm ruined the place to teach me a lesson. I caulked the cracks in the plaster and found patches from before. I repainted the walls and noticed the hasty paint job; the corner’s curves giggled as I lay down the painter’s tape; my soul felt the healing of wet, tender bristles on the wood’s latex skin over cracks, bulges, bumps, and bends. This place was alive with getting put together and falling apart again. I beheld its incurable quaintness and brutal, undeniable charm. Forlorn, I came to understand I would only add my own mistakes. I lay in bed; the walls were mine. The apartment an awning of wilderness.
Where it’s at
The most important thing about a loved thing is it is loved
Dry Terms
There is something in spontaneous being that defies analysis. That analysis, set apart from spontaneous being, searches for cheating rules when, without rules, being one’s self is not the rule, but simply the way. One sells one’s self short attempting to package one’s self into something that fits when fitting is supposed to be the substance. The broad expanse of the self, the contemporality of the self is that most precious elixir of the self we fain would capture if we could without denying its essence.
Little
So much beautiful wild my little
Verdant
So startled to see vibrancy: the full tender flesh of the flowers; proud colors present themselves before the overcast sky faithfully to the sun. Fragile, these fall days; about to tumble… the wind wisps about me. I see a tree struck by lightening; a cloven branch clings to the trunk, its leaves at my feet, curling with burning crimson. I gaze up and blink at the tree’s green leaves.
Birthday
Though it’s getting late in the day, shall I skip over to the lake? My years do not count like those of a child. I go to the lake, overjoyed to see the sun has not set. The sunlight dances completely from one side to the other; the entire breadth is shimmering: the glory of the dancing sunrays on the water. That is what these fall days provide: an extended lifespan and, then, to finally see the naked tree revealed in the light.
Floaty
I saw a beautiful floating thing
rock–leaf–floaty, hovering
just beneath the surface of the pond.
My heart gazed;
my romance
always on
“It is perhaps a piece of trash;
don’t be open.”
I gazed
sunken rock, gold leaf, floating submerged
Then I saw it:
a turtle’s head poking out of the water
breathing with the whole pond,
breathing my breath,
so cute and innocent
at once my love was explained.
One turtle in the whole pond
breathing in air for the whole pond,
poking its head out to connect
the underneath with the forest.
Floating in earnest little grace
and so picturesque
I grabbed and shook my phone.
“You are going to miss him.
He will go should you take
his picture.”
I took it.
He was not in it,
just a pond and woods
so picturesque if there would
be a little turtle in the middle of it.
I gazed
and saw the turtle unchanged
and as I delighted
he ducked his head down;
a ring emanated over the pond
and a little bloop where his head had been
— gone.
I looked back at the picture.
He was there; his head
one little speck.
The sublime floating gold
unseen
hidden by the pond’s reflection
of the sky.
I talked with some people there;
they had seen the turtle, too.