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CHILD’S POSE

Inhale the distillate of night, 

its sock-fuzz, cat dander & dust mites

among the carpet fibers 

& exhale the walrus, the whale, 

the giraffe & the three pterodactyls 

exiting 

through the door in your back.

Inhale the spores newly moldered 

during this afternoon’s warmth 

now re-icing in the needles 

beneath the Eastern White Pine 

outside the media-room window 

in a shaft of moonlight; 

exhale the alligator 

from the swamp in the Muppet Movie  

stalking Dom DeLuise who’s bantering

with Kermit about making millions 

of people happy in Hollywood 

before exiting  

through the door in your back.

Inhale the essence

of your husband’s baking Irish soda bread  

& exhale Kermit plunking his banjo, 

exhale his song about rainbows, 

the rusty Schwinn he rides to the El Sleezo, 

that giant pair of cartoon frog’s legs erected on the roadside, 

yes, exhale, exhale with your most diligent eight-count 

the freshly steamrolled pavement’s glisten 

exiting now 

through the flung-wide door in the small of your back.

Then, with the final, heavy-lidded inhalation that comes

just after your rump finds that further millimeter of declivity 

no one had imagined,

take in affectatious Miss Piggy 

winning the county fair beauty contest, 

stealing the heart of a certain amphibian 

& being flippant in French under a broad, starry, desert sky, 

along with everything else that’s trying 

to enter 

through the door in your back—    

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INDIGO BUNTING

innermost     & most    

neophyte-like     are these       

discords 

i still

grieve—          & yet     this  

opalescence dawning    

blue—   

unbridled wings           

nasturtium-blooms     &

topaz skies— 

is my Indiana  

never nigher to   

grace        

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GATEWAY

they keep it a secret

to stop you 

but when you find it 

you’ll step through… 

one      taste

in this far-away place of

flourless chocolate cake

of no more bran clusters or 

Brussel’s sprouts shoulding you 

no more stale crusts demanding 

who do you think you are?

now     you’ll be forever

enraptured by the devil’s food

in the universe of YOU:

oh yes!     all of you!     

your sweeps & furrows!     

your savors unfurled 

to his reverent tongue

his warmth ushering you

quiver by undulant quiver 

into the deep-delicious

coalescence that is 

The     Chocolate     Cake 

of a woman     unbound 

marveling                    how?

how is it that I’m not yet full? 

how is it that I’m still alive?    

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(CENTO) ON THE WAY BACK TO DREAMING

It so happens I am sick of managing 

as thin light on water, radiating 

green with my eyes, my shoes, my 

rage, only the right number of legs, 

scowling, holding the world 

of dew, forgetting everything meant 

to wake you: the flash of a hand, 

streak of movement, rustle of pebbles…  

The trees tell of the sun and yet 

I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet,

feel the small song in my chest swell.

The rain proclaims these trees, 

leaves tracks full of warm blood leading 

toward the night.  

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Credits: Pablo Neruda, Linda Gregg, Diane Seuss, Stanley Plumly, Issa Kobayashi, Czeslaw Milosz, Theodore Roethke, Ross Gay

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