ALL RESPONSES |
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my family used to visit
an old bachelor
who lived in a cabin
surrounded by birch trees
we followed
a magical path
through a sunlit woodland
of white and yellow-green
a neon adventure
his cabin walls
were pine
and lined with books
a piano
carefully placed
in the middle of
the room
his name
was everett
a cultured man
but i was too young
to appreciate that
having been so enchanted
by the forest
i scarcely
remember anything else
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Turn off machines, and go
for a walk in the woods
with friends and dogs.
Leave cell phone at home,
don't wear a watch,
forget about time.
Remember the child
who soaked up the world,
every color and smell,
felt roughness of bark,
whose cold lakewater hands
dared to touch
slippery fish
you caught with a worm
you stuck with a hook
on the dock, where turtles
ate your catch.
You jumped in, and lay
in the sun,
browning young skin,
later looking for ticks,
picking one off
that you found on your leg
that flew off the grass
as you walked through the bog
o'er the stream on a log,
up rocks on the hill,
to the view of the lake
and forest of birch,
where you watched setting sun
turn leaves to pure gold
and were inspired
to pick up a pen. |
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See how we fall towards
earth’s dark womb.
Gone is the clover-grass,
September’s ripening.
Among the lush green heat in corn
fields and apple orchards
the bees have spun honey
Golden golden golden
is how I want to remember
this interlude between
storms, the hurricane summer,
the artic blast to come. The sky is
still sulking and everywhere
we are packing it in:
squirrels to their hide-aways,
geese in moonlit formations.
We tidy the last pile of beach
gear with a sigh and stuff
one more pair of wool socks
in a stiffening drawer, draw close
to the fire, pull down the blinds.
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There are eyes
Mixing
with the autumn leaves,
the reddened sky
reflected in the lake.
Your eyes
The ones I’ll never forget
carry warm golden maple gazes
and softly pierce my heart
as sun beams
sifted through branches
of an autumn forest.
The ones
Expressing more than words
could ever say
through mossy glances
shaded by eyelashes
I once loved.
Those eyes
Which belong to this autumn
of red leaves
one made of rain
and scattered twigs,
an autumn that
through the wet of winter
and by the colors of spring
with you
Too soon
Will be lost.
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I am of the moving generation,
There never was a single home for me,
I never lost enough to have one.
Unlike my grandmothers,
emigrants who refused to speak of where
they came from, what was left there.
All their roots turned west,
their country a question stopped.
Yet behind those light shot blue eyes
was an island simmering in silence,
a green fish in the sea, peat smoke rising,
rain falling without sound.
Oh there are places where our roots
find easy purchase: lakes, wide bellied,
grey under clouds, broccoli topped islands,
sound of boat motors fighting wind,
ordinary gulls, ordinary stones.
Here is our place we say, or here.
We are like shortlived trees backlit
by slanted light that makes everything
seem bigger than it is, kisses the necks
and backs of women bent in fields,
expands the ordinary white belly
of the man in the hotel room window
until it becomes the breast of a well fed
great white heron and we become
the leaning throng of shallow rooted birch.
We know there is a hollowing in age
and a dappled hallowing.
People ordinary as peeling birch have
the inner lives of ancient traveling Greeks,
the ones who endure in marble sculptures,
forever part of one light mottled place.
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Sat in the shadow
of the church and
watched while
mourners filed in.
Moved one seat east
to remain outside
the suns reach as
it ticked its way west.
Felt in my lungs the bells
of the church chime
softly in the saddened sky,
a fresh eyed sky
Pondered the history of time.
Flicked a black tipped match
from where it was carefully
perched
to the ground,
where it belongs.
Looked into the scratched
face of my grandfathers
watch and realized
it wasn’t dead,
but self-winding. |
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Based on the stimulus The Apple Tree
By David Spjut
“Out of Order”
A fine house, three levels,
Symetrical, perhaps opulent
With orderly, decorative tiles for a roof
Stands beyond a field of flowers
Above and beyond the apple tree.
A constant running brook flows past.
So much depends on realizing
That the house is out of place
For all its straight lines and linearity.
Nature has her own geometry.
Her fine lines form where a field
Meets a stream, where sky forms horizon
No parallels, no angles, just a flow
Of flowers across a field
That in its perplexity of color
And slope and sweep of that field
Gives home to the bursting tree
And its very round, perfect apples.
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in response to Cloud Chamber
After the aerial show Claus rented a movie camera
and raided the Charmin display at Foodtown
on Speedway Drive all the while pretending
that he too was a sky captain instead of a plumber.
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She thought about leaving breadcrumbs,
but he was no regular bird
Thought about fallen leaves--a path raked
through them, her body covered in crimson
scarlet and orange, but wind was his
constant companion. She did not care,
found him cool and refreshing,
for he had this way of blowing her mind
clean, of sweeping the sky, of whisking
clouds away. He had this way
of balancing the world in his hands,
taking her exactly where
she needed to be. With him
the answer was always yes.
As dusked settled she found
herself alone, worried
he would not find her amidst all these trees
and so she gathered the stars
her body made each time he kissed her,
offered them to the heavens, offered too
her body made of earth, mossy and moist
from dew, knew one day she would become
his fossil, the impact he’d made on her
life, made her beautiful
She knew her stars lit his trail,
that Nature always gets it way
Soon he would take the path of least
resistance and wing his way back to her.
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a mix of autumn smells
crushed under my shoes
an old jalopy broken down
in the middle of the forest
tires taking thousands of years
to mulch their way into progress
fine spider lines of mold
tearing microscopically
a deer stands and stares
at our intrusion—we
are miles from home in
a county park, in Wisconsin
given by a family after
the last of them had died off
yellow is for her fear
as her body plummeted into death
she is buried here
tombstone knocked over, breath
leached from her bones
finally learning the natural way
to say goodbye.
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The birch translates in elegant, primeval,
verticle script, in black and white,
its rows resembling what we call Japanese.
Origins older than 5th century BCE,
younger than the birth of the Mississippi,
precursor to haiku and tanka.
Every other birch stressed
by the brush of a crow’s wing,
in alternating line lengths
and heights, all image, all
impression, all silence and space
between trees like cage bars,
whose genious is to capture
and hold what is readable,
from left to night, north to south.
What is backwards comes forwards.
No one without the wood’s language
is sure how or why this moves.
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Now that the brown
and gold and rust
have laid a warming blanket
on the floor, the rabbit—
(if it's really there; if it's not
instead the secret passage
to China)—can chew bark
with deer and beaver
paper sap and vitamins
from trees that live forever.
Perhaps one good roll
(if nobody's watching)
in the sappy scent of leaves,
and just for luck,
one good thump on the
log before hopping off
to dig his winter burrow. |
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inspired by Hostess
Ho-Ho’s
only one
Ding Dongs
this time
Suzie Q’s
exercise
Cupcakes
next time
Twinkies
keeping my
Snowballs
figure fine
Honey Buns
skinny one
Frosted Donuts
waistline
gimme one
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Some would say death comes with autumn,
trees blush deep oranges, yellows, reds
crumbling to the ground, a final dance in the wind.
When September’s page turns her face
on the warm wall of my kitchen,
I remember the lake, my black shoes,
moonlight against your bare arm.
I am alive for October, but if I were
some other thing, I would be of a Maple,
burning bright into November-
to fall on some child’s game,
the piles of leaves we jumped in so long ago.
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by lightning,
she said,
in bits
and pieces
of flash
surround me
with letters
until finally,
there is something
become
perpendicular
to my entire page
put the moon
in the right
corner
of my mind |
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(in response to Trail by Julie Klatt Singer)
I have told this story so many times
it has lost its meaning but still my mouth
wants me to say it, just like my hands
ache to hold her in their hunger like
it was summer come back from
the ice. I looked for her just like I had
promised, star woman of the silver hair
moon woman of grace, I wanted to lick the
silk from her eyelashes, I wanted to taste the
dew on her breasts, I wanted to lie down with her
in the sassy grass and lose ourselves
the way she taught me with her
wise fingertips smoothing over
my blue and blackened wings.
The way she gave herself
into my hands was as smooth as
the rivering over my wind-swept peaks,
moist and clean.
She told me where to find
her but when I looked she
was gone and the earthling
dust she left in her trail
spoke no language I could
understand. It was fall. And I had waited
too long to call her name, I had forgotten
exactly the shape of her foot where it
had rested upon my knee.
No, it was winter. Forgive me,
I came back too late,
when I looked for her, she was gone
taking her stars. In the bared earth
beneath the oak, I found
only a crimson blossom
still alive, a teardrop
intricate as snow.
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Dane Emma reclines
Soaking warmth from my wife
Brindle coat
of endless fascination
offsets Anne's curls of red flame
Chin resting on sweet hip curves
Taut ribbed chest raises
Gentle sigh emerges
Awakens
from my soft footsteps
Single eye opens
Canine lips curl into grin
Sensing this
two eyes open
Contented yawn
becomes ruby sugar smile
They are not in the moment
They are the moment |
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Birches, the pale,
stand in tight groves
competing,
forcing each other
and each new generation
to grow taller.
Their branches
descend
like tears
as if in blessing,
be it the new grass
or the yellow leaves.
And as long as they grieve
on that distant shore
where I
am not allowed to go,
their branches will weave
a memory, a notion of
what once was
me and mine. |
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Tonight,
I will not cry,
tonight, I will not sleep,
just hold you in my arms till dawn
and then . . .
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i am no longer acquainted with you
there. if you speak to me i do not
know what to say. i just listen, and
while you are talking, i wonder if
you remember the white birch trees
from the beach hill house. they
walked at night, moving to different
places in our yard, trying to warn us
about the future. trying to escape.
i used to stare at night from my east
window. in winter they looked
like white naked corpses or like you
look now, white leafed hair, black spots
on your slender branches. i remember
cutting one down. it was diseased,
and you said it was the right thing
to do. we humiliated it, cutting it
into smaller pieces, stacking them
like body parts against the cellar.
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"I died in the woods
because it made sense"
- Ben Carr
If when lost in the forest
with no trail with no cabin with no deer stand
no candybar in your pocket...
If in the forest the leaves grow still
as though you were a stranger to them
and trunks lurch and lie broken on the ground
when you are lost and the oaks overhead
speak, their bark rough their branches mean
and the birches are ghosts, the maples murderers...
If in the evening the rustlings come
like bacchantes rushing wildly through the brush
limbs, sticks, tatters, that awful joy
when lost and you searching for the faintest trace of track
a deer trail a houselight or garbage even
some proof that men have stepped there, and when they haven’t
when you make your hungry bed of leaves and dig
maybe into the earth your shallow den
you will uncover, you will only unbury it then.
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Drops of rain
fall between the fiery leaves
that now
wet and droopy
follow the call of the season.
Warm days of September
when a mellow sun
lays its rays on everything around me.
"Don't leave yet" I ask.
The heat dying in the evening hours
the dark coat of night
descending over our ending day.
"Hold on, wait..." I plead.
Wait for my eyes
to finish drinking this summer
that seems to wave goodbye
with hands made of
yellow and red covered branches,
of fizzy air sifted between my fingers,
wanting to grab at this colored sky.
"Take me with you" I whisper.
But oranges and pinks
disappear into the evening
the colors of the sky melt into one
and the last sunrays
kiss my face on their way out
in this ending day of September.
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I always believed I’d be the one to leave.
When we were little, it was me
who dreamed of foreign countries,
traipsing through Europe for months at a time
never coming home.
I would be the wanderer, the reckless nomad,
the one Momma cried for.
Our childhood we had in common.
Every Fall when we were kids,
we’d have to rake the yard,
building our piles super high
then while I ran hard and leaped into mine
you fell into yours backwards.
Bury me with leaves, you used to say,
as you lay in your pile and I’d come cover you up.
As we grew into adults,
I always relished the autonomy
of living by myself,
while you never liked being alone,
and did anything to avoid solitude.
You had a child, married, bought dogs
in the time it took for me to move away.
Over the years, when we talked
silences fell between us
like litters of dead foliage.
I never really heard you (or you me),
only the anger in the voice
at the other end of the line.
Those days, I was happy alone
in the woods kicking up leaves
listening to them scrape and scuttle away
instead of crumbling under my feet.
Against the autumn sunlight
with dying leaves glittering in showering trees
like sequined wedding gowns,
the dead ones often dropped
as lost years around me.
Today, I bring a lawn bag full
and pour it over your grave.
It’s all I can do.
I knew so little of you.
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As year by year I watch the seasons pass,
through supple boughs, from fragrant bowers,
soft petals fall, wraith-like, in gentle showers
and dying leaves too fall on yellow grass.
Kissed by spring rain, caressed by lazy breezes
each year I watch grains swell in summer’s heat,
see harvest bring a flood of golden wheat
and hear pools shiver, knowing winter freezes.
It has not turned cold yet. Still, my heart flutters.
Is it because I painfully recall
that I loose something precious every fall
when yellow leaves drift past my half-drawn shutters.
There, though I love to see the seasons turn,
goes one more year of my too brief sojourn.
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a rewrite
i am no longer acquainted with you.
when you speak to me, i do not know
what to say. i just listen.
while you are talking, i wonder if
you remember the white birch trees
from the beach road hill house. they
walked at night, moving to different
places in our yard, trying to warn us
about the future. i used to stare at them
at night from my upstairs east bedroom
window. in winter they looked like white
naked corpses. like you look now:
white leafed hair, black spots
on your slender branches.
i remember cutting one down.
it was diseased, and you said
it was the right thing to do.
we cut it into smaller pieces,
stacking them like body parts
against the cellar door. |
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(In response to: THE GOOD-BY SCREAM/EMBRACE by Icarus)
...gently caress your amber skin.
I would sip you
a stare at the time
starting at your closed eyes
dark feathery accents
fluttered by your dreams.
My glances, weightless fingertips
slide around your cheek bone
and toward your sleeping ear
in which I'd silently whisper
my love for you. |
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Caesura
What happened to the October wind,
that ceaseless, headlong tyrant?
He has pulled up, startled.
He’s holding his breath
beneath the wide blue pause
of the October sky.
He has his ear to the wall,
his hands in his pockets,
expecting at any moment
to feel November’s rattle
and shake, knowing that
the door will not withstand
the great white pummeling fists
of approaching winter.
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| There are more charcoal black squirrels this fall than there have been in previous years—they hardly stand out against the asphalt alley as they run across it. Watching their foraging these past few weeks I sometimes thought that all was night in the treetops, only to discover sunset standing right beside the branches each evening—it is always a surprise. A few blocks away the river’s surface pounds its minute, constant fists against the shield of a concrete turn’s embankments, watery hands too small to deconstruct the humanity of constricting values. I relax on my porch, in a hoodie and a plaid jacket, pipe in hand, trying to understand why gold has less and less value as the days progress, the leaves being sucked to brown. Soon it will be winter, with showers of diamonds on the gray gray scene, the only surety being that they will lower their market value as well. But I will shovel them into piles of broken-glass sparkles, putting them up until spring when they will run to the river again, little voices sparkling in small songs. |
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I was
supposed to return quickly
from the superette, but
I lost my footsteps somewhere
around the third swing
of the compass—even though
I gave you a lodestone,
a promise,
that I would always return;
but other lives are all made
out of the same silvered hair
that I watch for, like a landmark, and I am
so confused
here in the middle
of the city block, where trees
have ceased their leafing out
only to drop their heavy burden
on an unsuspecting public,
after all, it is July. |
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I walked through my garden this morning.
The okra is spent, its last unfolding flowers
browned around the edges.
A few rusty tomatoes hung on for dear life,
the green ones scarlet dreams,
but a few ignorant blooms defied frost warnings.
A ripe butternut squash lay among withered vines,
waiting for the oven, brown sugar and butter.
Jalapenos and thais have ceased their blushing,
habaneros no longer favor orange. All remain green,
but hot enough for a final jar of salsa.
Bell peppers, ripped up. Cucumbers faded long ago.
It's time to pull up what's left, and wait for snow.
If I still lived in Georgia,
there would be fifty fat tomatoes on the vine.
We'd be picking yellow squash,
eating fresh okra every night,
slicing up watermelon picked this morning.
We'd have boiled peanuts and steamed oysters,
but that's another story.
A lot of things would be different.
But would tomatoes taste as sweet, with no urgency
to prepare for the onslaught of December?
It's too hot to garden there, anyway,
and sunlit beaches always beckon.
I'll just stay here and watch the days shorten.
It brings out the best in us, you know. |
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My eyes closed
my nose smells the nearby TV
preaching Wheel of Boredom
to my stoned roommate
World inside my ears
swirls with clouds
waves of surf
shards of shattered stained glass
Echo beats pulse my heart
popping slurs fly from digits
nickel-stained fingertip divots
turn of the volume knob
buzzsaw fuzz tsunami
floods
my brain
Soul sojourn
journey to the other land
Universal language spoken
only to multiple personalities
between the headphones
It's
Our
Secret
Escape
into activity
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