Arboreal Fears
The oak tree in my frontyard is plotting against me, a damn conspiracy,
siding with a fresh northern breeze and Newton’s gravity,
targeting my balding head
bared to darkening heaven, praying each evening, and twilight
falls and acorns too like hail stones in fescue lay dying or dead,
longshot promises of immortality or winter snack, a quick bite
for neurotic, antsy squirrels in sudden October winds.
They know I’m just another punch drunk valentino
hiding in the ‘burbs.
The warm lit windows stoke the seven year sins
and the tongue taste thought of gin or vino.
My feet keep crackling grass, stumbling off curbs.
I hear squirrels giggle and chilled robin redbreasts laugh.
Somewhere right now the earth just shifted,
plates collided,
a melting ice shelf or a drifting continent split in half.
In the shakes the damn oak sways, red eyes are lifted,
another acorn falls and I keep telling myself not to fight it.
siding with a fresh northern breeze and Newton’s gravity,
targeting my balding head
bared to darkening heaven, praying each evening, and twilight
falls and acorns too like hail stones in fescue lay dying or dead,
longshot promises of immortality or winter snack, a quick bite
for neurotic, antsy squirrels in sudden October winds.
They know I’m just another punch drunk valentino
hiding in the ‘burbs.
The warm lit windows stoke the seven year sins
and the tongue taste thought of gin or vino.
My feet keep crackling grass, stumbling off curbs.
I hear squirrels giggle and chilled robin redbreasts laugh.
Somewhere right now the earth just shifted,
plates collided,
a melting ice shelf or a drifting continent split in half.
In the shakes the damn oak sways, red eyes are lifted,
another acorn falls and I keep telling myself not to fight it.
posted by shakes at 10:15 AM
1 Comments:
I have been meaning to comment on your poems, but then I decide that their density needs to build to conversation, so I plan to talk with you about them, then life (& work & other work) gets in the way of that--what was it Thoreau said about the poem he would have writ?
Anyway, this is a great one--the build up (repetition of image, movemment, Pound's "complex" image, etc.) leads to a wonderful final stanza/line:
another acorn falls and I keep telling myself not to fight it.
And there is so much to be fought or given up or in.
well done--I will carry this one with me a while.
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