Homage to Summer - pictorial

Y 

o 

u

and

I have

traveled well

together for many 

years.   Orange, blue,

blue, yellow, white, silver

blue, I have trusted you in all

your incarnations. We have seen

seedlings become trees, and we have

seen trees bursting with buds turn green

then red then winter bare. We have seen trees

ravaged by insects and latticed by woodpeckers.

We have seen scores of trees bend and break in the

path of tornadic storms. We have seen trees cut, quartered,

dismembered, mulched, and then hauled away by earsplitting

trucks. We have seen trees in splendor and in despair. It is now

October of our accumulated years together. Trumpeter swans have

returned to winter in the nearby lake; the hummingbirds have all flown

to sunnier climes. The nights are getting longer and soon you and I will part

company for six full moons. While I retreat to my chair to read beside the fireplace,

you will stand in wait behind locked doors.

As the ground thaws and the trees grow pregnant with buds, I shall leave the warmth of the house to cross the dormant lawn. Ever so carefully, with failing sight, I will turn the dial clockwise, counterclockwise, then clockwise again. Reluctant, the battered lock will release and the doors to the shed will fold outward like pale yellow rose petals to the sun.

There I will find you with dust clinging to your lean frame and flat tires looking forlorn from the long winter.         No matter.   I will wash you off              and air you up and we will ride through the

forest   in

reverence,

breathing

in     pine,

daz      zled

by         the

l  i  g  h  t  .

Technorati Tags: bicycle,tree,summer

Shells

She discards the shell of her last life
wishing she could send it far off
into the future, or to some other distant place,
but instead she does what all shell collectors do,
which is to pile old shells in a grisly heap
in the corner of the room where she ponders
the first year that she grew a shell.

Her shell is heavy as a giant clam.
It took decades of angry multiplication and soul
division to finally outgrow it and, when she casts it aside,
it’s just a short time before she puts on
another shell bigger and thicker than the first.
Though it’s enormous, the shell hides
only what everyone can already see.
There are other shells, too,

each more ponderous than the one preceding, and each time
she outgrows a shell and casts it aside, it makes a noise
like teeth gnashing, which is exactly the sound
of Past colliding with Present, and soon
there is room in her heart wholly for empty shells
and gnashing teeth. On the rare days

when the sun comes out
it’s like opening a letter from a favored friend.
Still, she carries two umbrellas
just in case it storms and when someone tries to wrest
her umbrellas from her, she defends her right to carry them
because battle is easier than learning to drink
from the pouring rain. She returns

to her room of discarded shells
to pick up Flamingo tongue,
Atlantic slipper, glossy dove,
queen conch, the shell of a sea turtle -
and soon finds that the giant clam,
Sovereign of the Sea,
is no longer suitable as armor.           

Exposed,

she looks for shelter, or a place where her life
can burst forth like flowers sprung from the desert
after the end of a long drought.

Technorati Tags: shells,shell

An Opera in Five Concise Acts

Prologue.

Assemble objects from a girl’s life. {Fairy tales, baby dolls, blood,
broken bones, baby teeth, piggy bank, pop beads, jewelry box,
hula hoop, Dick and Jane, Nancy Drew, polished agates, four-leaf clovers,
Emeraude, blue suede shoes, forty-fives, diary (no key), pom poms, sewing kit,
figure skates, Play Do, tap shoes, tonsils, birth stone, bookmarks, stubby crayons,
tea set, cowgirl boots, Easter hat.}  Store them in a barrel, 90-proof.

Act I.  Scene- Years later.

Woman.  Pieces pile.  Decades of brokenness.   A few lucid moments. 
Swirly eye of agate. Swatches of Rapunzel’s golden hair.
Red scraps of cloak.  Shards of Cinderella’s slipper. 
Dark piece of Sleeping Beauty’s beauty. 
Diary pages torn, unreadable.
A green leaf spared from a cast-off lucky clover. 
Silver coins, round edges mashed in dirt. 
Baby doll, left arm missing, dead on the street.

Chorus.  We pour ourselves a rummy shot, a rummy shot of life;
We drink the sweet and bittersweet, the sugar and the blight.
Bottles never empty and drunks are never filled;
We break our bottles into bits on Alcoholic Hill.

Act II.  Scene- The same.

Woman.  Watercolors rain downhill.

Act III.  Scene- The same.

Woman.  I get confused describing. 
Is it a man or a fish?
Homo sapiens or barracuda?
Both are made by God.
But which is fish eyed, scaly skin and tearing teeth?
And which hails from farmland baling love?
One is piercing.  The other pierced.  Green lungs,
but whose?  Briny brain, but whose?
Which brings everyday chaos,
laughter made from dirt?

Act IV.  Scene- Temple of the Goddess.

Goddess.  Sweep up this mess.

Woman.  I sweep brokenness long and hard.
Goddess.  Lay the fragments to rest.  Let’s go hand in hand, not one before the other.

Act V.  Curtain opens.

Animals

        I like animals that feed themselves
like leopards and other predators
who pounce, gorge, and vanish.  I like
night animals that howl and prowl, gore
and roar, that know how to pick a carcass
clean.  I like animals that live outdoors

untethered,

and animals with eyes that glow
in the dark. 

There is a dust-felted train
that travels from Ujiji to Dar es Salaam. 
People on the train share a berth with
goats and chickens.  I prefer to travel
among a hundred-thousand hooves
that stampede unshod across
the savannah.  I like
animals who cut the landscape

 in two.

Ode to Chocolate



sjbestland copyright 2011

O Chocolate! here in candy store cases

you front the aisle of Bloomingdale’s, what Balzac

called “the great poem of display.”  You are

my first stop in a life-long pursuit of things

Forbidden.  Here, under glass gleaming, is my

Apothecary of blue-ribbon candies, edible pounds

of joy.  Chocolate sleek and sophisticated, you are

dressed in gold foils shimmering.  Chocolate clusters,

you draw me near with pecans that poke, beckon,

arouse.  Assorted chocolates tempt me: shall I taste

them all?  Reading their names - truffles, turtles,

caramels, creams - here are pharmaceuticals

for the gods.  I imagine lifting the lid - only a whiff

and I’m thinking about the chiffon suss of decadence,

the sugary swirl of indulgence, the titillating taste

of desire.  I sink my teeth into the tender skin and lay bare

a secret.  Is it chewy coconut?  Wild raspberry?  Milk chocolate? 

dark chocolate?  Frothy dubonnet...or wicked toffee carre’? 

I strut to the next department smacking my lips - decorative

tulips are piled high in translucent bins - full-grown flowers

plump with foliage cut from green silk.  I free the blooms

and spread them across the tile floor to make a lush garden

path.  I glide in heaven back to the Devil sweets, a lady

returning to her decadent lover.  What do I see in chocolate?

Romance and turpitude.  Passion and depravity.  Love

and idolatry.  Virtue and vice.  Sin and more sin.  Sin in a box. 

Sin in a bite.  I want to wear it.  Look how I take truffles

and twist them into my hair.  I wear creme de boulee’

like a crown.  I attach bonbons to my body like jewels. 

Strawberry fondants bedeck my arms; my legs

are adorned in assorted creams.  Look, my candied body

made harmonious with silk tulips.  Look how I cadence

with the garden’s color.  Look at my cocoa bean

eyes, my sugar-coated silhouette, my bouchee profile.  This

is what sin is: using temporal things to hide my nakedness.

O Chocolate!  I wear you as a gown.  I pouf and rustle, melt

and bustle.  Look, the sleeve designed of Hershey Blisses.  Look,

the bodice of plain and peanut M&Ms.  Look, the skirt of Tootsie Rolls.

Call me Ghiradelli.  Call me Frango.  Call me Fannie May. 

And you -

you may call me Godiva.