I Wait Under A Fig Tree
Clothing a self in her leaves
The shame of living and the struggle to become naked again
Just myself unencumbered by the wants
Freed of the suffering, alive and able
To react to another that stands in this garden too.
I look at this fig tree, up through her
Branches into all the consciousness of mind
Through the leaves sunlight streams and brightens tender fruit
Of possibility and truth.
A fig tree cultivated the garden of knowing
It roots in the mind of the man, in my mind
Who sits here in her shade with me now?
Wearing her leaves his hungers are led
To the lush sweet fruit and a wasps busywork
I have found this in my earthly bed, in this life.
This fig attracting, bearing man's blessing and burdens.
To be seen in our piety and our complete inadequate nakedness
Be able to stand here with fig leaf and loathsome shame
To face the burden of our aching aggressive self
Within the beauty of our gentled palm
See life and death, either as blessing or scorn.
As I wait under a fig tree.
Welcome Fall
The best days were the hell raisin' football times going down College Avenue
With our Dad and getting our seats to see the Mighty Mountaineers
In a stadium that roared, leaves blew, Pitt fell, victory pulsed a heartbeat
That ran through a crowd devouring sweet the blood
Autumn who came to our lives with the color of our red maples
Sticky summer fading to the clear cool of running emerald Monongahela
Fall.
That season still fills the Appalachian man today I'm sure, though I'm away
Far away, anemic and clinging to signs of seasons as a dying hag might.
Witching nights and Indian moons call her out
Watching celluloid replays and realizing overtime defeats.
Filling up an insignificant West Virginian woman who needs to be home again
Take me there down those country roads
'Cause in this coming season your fall just makes my raw heart bleed.
Sunflower
Seeds spiral into cubist core
An Impressionistic vase holds precarious form
Harvested into the daily myth
Of the poets and artists
Looking at this rough steward of autumn
Head tall, braced on a stalk, standing
Flower of a hungry man
Anointing this day in his life.
Pumpkin Shell
And there he kept her very well.
I could live in a pumpkin shell, Peter.
Because somehow you couldn't keep her.
I'll stay home you pumpkin eater
Peter, Peter with wife so wild, seek her.
Pumpkin
Frost on the fields finds them
The baby blossoms now are lost
Little pumpkins losing the race to winter
We ran that contest many the year
To see our fruit to a size of harvest
In a land with late spring and early fall.
We lost every year to the cold snap.
Leaving pumpkins too young to be brought in
The old song a hymn to what might have been
Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God's own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.
I Wandered By Way of The Desert
Was it Ishmael that wandered the desert?
Seeking the father, lost, bearing into his
Children the burden of rejection, his horrible deception
A lost of possibility for kindness
Born into a people. An entire people.
He a victim forever?
We learn this. We read the tale.
And yet, we doubt the truths
And go hurt some more
In our choices to hear
One over another
To hang the desert over some
Over another place a wreath of Decadence
I was watching the desert bloom in my room
Teaching yesterday
Into inquisitive looks and happy smiles
As they delighted in lunchboxables
On a trip walking to a fire station and back for a lunch
We couldn't eat at the park because violence last year
Turned into teens joyfully slapping
A 6 year old in the face as we played, marking her face.
In the desert there are thorns
And crowns that are worn
And brothers where one is "good"
And the other a lovely child on a lawn
Offering me a little tiny cookie sandwich from his box.
Centerin'
Through the kitchen window, I watched awhile
As Zeppelin proved to me once and for all they aren't a choir
He laughed and called in "Mac you ain't no devil worshiper"
Adding, "I'm glad for that."
To appease the gods that started to whirl in here.
He's trying to center a pot.
He likes to handbuild works I call dada because
They are hard to hold with eyes or arms
Sometimes, made of distortions as he speaks
Of the Golden mean, and i laugh
I'm watching him pull and push on this great
Gift from close friend, a pottery wheel, perfect present
It whirls around as he works in the mud
Happily grinding out something that may work out.
And it's a Zep album radio day, how is that possible?
There must be a lot of those playing in the
Backyards of pottery making guys, there must be a reason,
He's promising me a teapot but the form is resisting
A lava flow might be better held in this.
But he is happy and there is clay on the walkways
My husband is just outside my window
Throwing me a teapot that I think already collapsed
But it will one day appear for my collection of things we made
Together, one inside, the other outside the window
In our house we call the fortress.
Grapes
I'm looking at these lovely grapes my tummy can't eat today
Hurting again, the cancer
Trails.
But I'm thinking about depressing stuff
Chinese babies fed formula
made of some
shit.
By someone that had a great idea
And did something unthinkable
why?
I bet the answer would be sadder
Than I could hold
Hell
Dad grew grapes, Freda had her arbors too
Those had these skins you squeezed the insides in your mouth.
sweet.
They boycotted the grapes when I came out to CA
Cesar went hungry over the poison harming the babes
here
I bet the story about that spraying
Of all those workers would drown me now in deep
stupid
My tummy hurts too much to eat
and who would want to chomp on much
now.
Bridge
She said "Who reads this stuff on playing bridge?"
Speaking into the paper.
It's disconcerting to see the child you want to hold again
reading the LA Times.
She saw an article on Palin, noting her nowhere bridge lying
She said, "Why wasn't this run on the front page?"
I come out of room to hear a non sequitur
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
I wonder about this, and recall my daughter
Asking "Who plays bridge anyway?"
I tried to play with the idea of bridges
Tried to build one these last few years
She rustles her pages looking at the science views of candidates
Reason suiting up in boxing gloves
Building it's bridges over flaming rivers
Liars, dollars and piety harder and harder to cross.
Beautiful
A set of daisies are sitting on my counter
Watching us make the Chicken Parmesan
Their color is actually so clean and seasonal
Fresh and invigorating it lifts us up
Settling me down into a realization I'm here at yet another fall.
Your bowl, abalone form calls out
It is a beautiful form made and given
Holding this dismayingly ugly tomato
The edge a grace of whitened line
Someone plopped this gargantuan from the harvest
Into my little abalone bowl
I may fill that bowl with some rose petals
Or leave it for my thoughts to lay within on the morning
something to consider
As i rise and contemplate the day
And what it might bring forth for us.
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