nationa poetry month

a poem a day in april

April 1

I could never show trees how I saw them
to my writing teachers. I showed them in some drawings
and in my yard, but I am not understood.
This tree has red tropical leaves, poorly pruned. That tree is a weed.
The tree my landlady thinks is a big bonsai is not, but I like the idea.

Clouds, too, apparently should escape my notice.
Is it for the same reason I shouldn't sing?
I track them always, like song; they not only distract me from commercial and social purposes, but also from any purpose.

April 2

after Martha Ronk's desert Geometries, in Florida

Mourning has been taught to us

"one blue bird / ... swoop(s)"

why am I sparkling?
I am naked.
Oh, I am married.

Jalousies, miniblinds, verticals
only impede the insistent foliage.

Many lizards, mangroves,
banyans:

nothing careful as a note,
as temporary that way.

The horizon line is blurrier over sea than over rock
but over the Keys, behind condos --
are they elegaic? in the summer --
just an apparent line, meeting,
meeting as appearance, aperature.
Only elegies open this way.

We make no frame, either;

imposed.

To leaves, to shells.

What if we don't remember, if nothing around us
triggers it
(what? memory)
(of what?)