One Tree

I'm thinking about joy today,
and how it attaches itself
like a soap bubble
to a blade of grass
or something as dirtied
and weathered as a fence post.

This reminds me
of milkweed pods,
their little canoe prisons
that release such fluff
and nonsense into the air
you just have to giggle.

The seeds are a shower of laughter
for the dark, purpled woods.

They may stick and root.
They may fall on deaf dirt.

Two Trees

The light drips
unsupervised
into dusk. Then,
winter.

It's obvious
that day sips
from the tankard
of night. Leaves
blush, wind staggers
drunk across the field,
through your hair.

--
Happy St. Michaelmas. Count your animals.

Three Trees (in the breezy breeze blew)

And did I mention the door
smashed against the porch,
the screen left dangling
like an exposed nerve?
There was one outlet.
I unplugged the bubbler
in the fishtank to switch
on the coffeepot.
The landlord was a sticky
and turbulent man,
an inventor of emergencies.

And there was the thick
lead paint, third floor,
layered cake carpeting
apartment. Bad romantic
choices. Vodka my father
left after a visit.
A miniature piano
that smelled of old oak.

That was a time ago.

Before that, the woods.
A childhood of craft.
Huckleberry excess,
thimbles of violets,
a canoe to float
like a dash on the lake.
The chop of an ax,
learning to stack logs
between two trees.

Four Trees (Cuatro árboles)

for European Day of Languages

Amanecia --
en la flor azul,
la canta abejita.

Daybreak --
in the blue flower,
a bee sings.

--

Una hoja de oro
flota
en el aire blanco --
capturado en una cuchilla de telaraña.

A gold leaf
floats
in the white air -
captured in a blade of spider web.

--

Tristeza --
asesinado por una mariposa.

Sadness --
cut down by a butterfly.

--

Setas,
que los paraguas de la pasión!
Mantequilla. Sí.

Mushrooms,
you umbrellas of passion!
Butter. Yes.

Five Trees

Do not deviate:
pencil in the folder,
glue dotted on the edge
of the paper. Don't smear.
Remove the patch and watch
the water stream, then tender
grass, an apron of green.
Collect it all in a basket,
dandelion seeds, mud,
the strong, the weary,
the careless hazards of the day.
Do not deviate: they are yours.

Six Trees

Bricks eddy into a chimney,
a few domino a garden wall.
Everyday grit. Tetris.
One is beached in the center of the road:
it causes every car to slow, veer.
So alone, it commands respect
in its solitude,
has built its own house.