thought i'd wake up in the night
when the cold sky opened
with some sort of knowing

thought this morning
my soul would finally cleave

thought the poppies would 

come up this year
and bloom today

but they didn't

and so       just now

i thought about your hands

and realized they are exactly 

the size of the rain's

phenology

yesterday the crab-apple by the house
today the lilac by the garden
i calculate star geometry
and anticipate the dogwood

me, i'm looking for the perfect stone
in the dark of rain at noon
and to measure my fortunes
by the roughness of my hands

princess light

only one answer

I stood in the flowery dawn
(the summer triangle rising
just before the light)
and asked my question plainly

"Just how many poems
can one man compose
on the subject of spring?"

I heard the hyacinths blooming

Black Sun

To awaken is to return to being
to be re-lit in a dark cubicle;
the first steps that I take
in this re-being are tentative.

To again be in such darkness
is a sailing without compass.
I have my compass by my side,
the dark expanse of a black sun

which is your hair,
inverse lighthouse, lightless,
that gives me direction
with the gypsy light it beams.


                   

                                                -- J.C.M.N.

Swamp Spring

slow crawl home by the semaphores of spring

the swamp inhales all my old woes

and i sigh smiling quietly into the polyp clouds

the cherry blossoms buzzing!

all day, single petals tumbling in troves

even into full flower-moonlight

with that hush-murmer of midnight;

dark geese that pass north

and an owls sounding

as if to measure

the forest night

i'll go sleep out in the creeping myrtle at noon

dream of stars that decay on mountainsides

(star-mountains i cannot forget)

and the ones we cannot see in daylight

wake to the pastel body of spring beside me

and whisper my demands;

make my mind a spiral of blooms!

the dogwoods umbrals,

the forsythias yellow-fire, 

the magnolias lotus loomings

o make me the tiny petals

that i may know the orgasm of abscission!

i want to tongue the anthers!

i want to dust the stigmas!

she only stared my blue eyes teary,

stood and walked away,

her colors blending in the bright wet blur

How to die in the Mountains

When lost in the mountains

consider yourself lucky

and make friends with the stones



When lost in the mountains

don't be so quick to find doom

plenty of ancient chinese men

died with smiles on their faces

under some wind broken pine




When lost in the mountains

don't forget to blush before the birds

as cute as you think you are

they could still show you the proper way to die

and help you avoid any unpleasant experiences



When lost in the mountains

find the highest peak

from there you can listen

to the strange sounds from the city

from there you can see

just what you left behind

from there the wind will speak

in cool tongues if its chosen you

and if it has it will carry your shattered soul

to the place inside the mountain

where old hearts go to die

where dirt is a language

where the uplift of mountains

is the only way to get to heaven

where the slow murmur of the continents

sliding on molten earth is all you will ever hear

for the rest of those thousand lives you know you'll live

if you've managed to get

lost in the mountains

Last Years Worm Moon Mother-Son Poem Exchange

Son:


hugely orange worm moon rising
set the earth again to moving
--the writhing of her worms

flourish! dirt-movers
take to dancing your
thawed ground ways!

incite the songs of spring!






Mother:


Crocuses fully bloomed
Daffodils bursting
Pansies firmly planted on the porch
Rebirth renew relief
Rejoice! in the constancy of her cycles






Son:


the Yellow Trumpets have sounded!
surely they know this rounding best
--those pioneers of spring

the clouds play games of light
on the waking webs of green
robins swirl their hunger-dances
my soul too, thawing
in the sun we share.






love you mom.

Death, Thou comest

when I had Thee least in mind.

-Everyman

Nicotiana

o take me death-leaf

take and press me

with your thumbs of smoke

into the earth

that I may lay with an open head

and become the hillside;

indistinguishable as dirt,

as black clouds

that pass the moon

at midnight

but the birds are singing!

it is spring!

still,

I've died this time,

relinquished my breath

with the equal night

and only with spring

was born all over

o that

deaths head hawk moth

that came and tongued the anthers

when my mind became

the comet flower

whispered something as it flew

something only heard

by the gone beyond

thus

I know

I have not gone