Moon
No wonder we can't sleep.
She's new again.
Lunation.
Such a tasty word
upon the tongue.
Waxing and waning,
she pulls the sea.
And me. I ride
her tides at night
in my yellow otter
searching for her
in these tropical
springwarm salty
waters. Maybe she
is caught in mangrove roots,
spying on sleeping baby snapper.
Haikus at Tarpon Basin
Clad in vibrant tie-dye tee
she blows her conch shell thrice.
Sun sinks.
Lizards lust and litter us
with ever littler lizards.
It's Spring.
Lightning plucks a flash of form
from brilliant dark. Piled cloud posts.
Summer.
Into the Ether
No one hears me but the wind and rustling branches,
unless the roots I walk on and between have ears.
I have always walked and talked my poems,
writing without implements or paper,
sung my sorrows, barked my joys, jotted plans,
insights invisible on bits of birch bark brushing
past me as I pick my way past ranger wrought blue smears
half worn off rocks and tree trunks in a line of jagged arrows.
I own this up down dirt and granite path that starts
steep straight up Flying Mountain, then winds down
around to Valley Cove where upscale boaters shelter
and wake up to golden mornings. Certain dogs
own homes here too inside their skin. As do I.
We sing to sun, to morning breezes, change
and fjords carved by giant ice floes skittering creaky
in slow dance mode, three-four time times years
that number in the tens of thousands. Already
I do not remember my first verses of this morning.
I think they are not lost but free, bucking
for pure happiness on updrafts of the ethers,
looking down at last year's falcon nests, wondering
when the peregrines will come again and if they'll listen.
Help
I took a bit of branch from someone else's
frangipani tree and pushed its bottom
into my own garden. I watered it for weeks.
Have you ever noticed how erotic
frangipani branch tips look, once the roots
take hold and baby leaves approach full length?
I am forced to touch to see if that new
and vibrant green is wet. But it is not.
That slick look comes from fresh stretched
chlorophyll-drenched tissue, shiny verdancy
of unused, unexposed, unoxidized youth .
Still, it makes my mouth go dry in wonder,
as if the branch tip were a pulsing member
of some brand new wild as yet undiscovered
species, unsheathed for the very first time.
If I am so undone by this revealed young stem
and leaves, where will I go for help when and if
tight fragrant buds, then dazzling flowers, appear?
Olympic
if someone asked,
I would not say
I fell in love.
I'd say I stood,
then slid,
then took off
running 'til both feet
left ground behind.
I'd say I leaped,
a kind of broadjump,
trusting in the face
of eons worth
of evidence
to the contrary,
that there would be
heaps of sand,
soft and warm
and welcoming,
to cushion me
when spent
at last
I would land.
© 2009 Gloria Avner. All rights reserved.
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