Marching Ants - Inspired by Dave.

Today was one of those days so sunny and beautiful, you must enjoy every last minute of it, even if it means forgetting to eat dinner - and lunch. Okay, so that was unwise, but shall we say that sun was enjoyed? It was. And as nice as today was, tomorrow is supposed to be sunnier, with clouds rolling in this weekend just in time for.... my beach trip. Lovely. I'm actually excited for the clouds rolling in over the breakers and the beach - I'm certain that will be beautiful. But I'll want it warmer when the winds start blowing, I'm sure.

top of a building, lay of the land
is a mound of a million marching ants
without a queen, and though
the world is prone beneath my feet,
I've no dominion, and no conviction,
only a fear of falling, knowing
the land would swallow me
unknowing, like a flightless bird
why won't they flutter properly, langston?
why did I never learn, even in dreams,
how to flap my wings

when I walk, xee jogs, as I jog, xee runs
running behind, xee flies, and I leap into the sky
riding the updrafts until xee becomes sound
and vrooms. Then I close my eyes and hum,
becoming the music that sings the earth along,
but I'm falling further and farther behind,
when finally xee becomes light, a meteor
taking my wishes and shooting for the moon
blazing an arc of light across the sky
and in a single moment, xee's gone
and now I'm standing still, wondering at the moon

Morning at night

the soft sleeves of morning
form dewdrops of sorrow,
or the golden smiles of dandelions,
around the hazelnut orchards -
stay awhile, it's too beautiful
to leave, lie beneath the boughs -
wind slippers my toes
fog my fuzzy pantaloons
tell no truths I cannot bear -
flower faerie rings,
the magic of dreams girds me,
and below the cherry blossoms,

below the plums, beside rose bushes,

from the dust I rise to dawn

good morning

Just Spring

Drawing with the sloth friend this evening.  Spring was showing its colors in force today, even though the rain is coming (perhaps that is the true face behind today's masquerade). Cherryblossoms are bursting into bloom with radiant pink petals, and the dogwoods accepted the challenge, and effloresced in beautiful whites, and the greengreengreen is trickling out in greater quantities, and the blueblueblue of the sky, why, sometimes this is all a person needs.

hibernation, then, is all
this soul gets and remembers
The freezer too long, friends,
until now, I hear the flute of pan
fawning over the land - listen
the cedar bellows though faintly
listen and you'll hear echoes of nymphs
and dryads giggling with the leaves in the trees
and it's rising, wildflowers caressing the hillsides
crescendo, as the witch's white hand recedes
cold lessens and the world is all puddles and glee
trumpeting, spring into dance the world is blossoming
birds fluttering home and building their nests with the bees
buzzing warily across the newborn earth, and somewhere a star
shines, and passes over a land whose bitterness needs passing over
Immanuel, resurrect in the baptism and christening of vernal verdancy
Floating like cottonwood on the breeze, breathe, the world is whole again.





Some of my favorite ee cummings poems are on spring: in just and I also like the balloonman. I wrote a short story for a competition (and lost) using the balloonman as a basis. Someday, I'll have to return to that short and edit it a bit. I think it had a little potential. Well, the week is coming, and sleep is gearing up in my gut. Back to ye olde hibernation.

Antheia please

The flowers, the blooms, I can smell them heady-strong, and I'm drunk with their love. The starlings nesting in roof slats warble obnoxiously; the trees shrug the world of ice from their shoulders with deep, ancient groans; the stars glitter and parade into new locations while the sky subtly lightens her hue; but it's the flowers, the blossoms I await in my room.

The prickly roses are sleeping beauties, tulips, voluptuous lips of spring, the wildflowers showering the mountainsides paint a picture so brilliant, I discard my easel and become a boy again, rolling down slopes and beneath the willows and evergreens. Spring, spring is coming, the season of life-giving green, days where the light is greater than night.

Where baby bunnies cluster around in the tall grasses, glancing at the true blue sky between the shivering pines, and the sing-song breeze brushes past and whistles to the tune of life; as deer pause by the shimmering silver of streams and lap at ease; when the squirrels chatter with the chirping chickadees, and cottonwood seeds float along the streets and hillsides. Antheia, please, clothe the mountains extravagantly; Rhea, lady of the wilds, wrap the stones, forests, earth, and living with verdancy, and let us see something worthy of a resurrecting.

Sometimes, the loneliest of places are within the wildest of crowds full of unfamiliar faces. You catch fleeting glimpses of passing emotions like sparks from a fire, but never linger long enough with another soul for warmth. It's like a dream, in a city street full of ghosts (are you walking through or with the stream? it's impossible to tell. Is anyone moving?), and the voices and noises around could be the hiss of the wind as easily as the words from the lips of these empty, translucent beings. (am I the same ghostly figure as these? what do I look like in their eyes?) Sometimes, the most fulfilling talks are held from hundreds of miles away, and you only wish they would drag you through these crowds, or that you might fight through them together. But it's only a dream, and the sun will rise and shed new light on life if you wait long enough. 

Sometimes, the greatest joys are those where it's just the holy spirit and I, and she doesn't mind that I know not how to pray, she intercedes anyway.