another sonnet for another season

suede of meadow
and calico of birch
catalogued for greenth and warmth

back behind the hill
the midnight birds aren’t flying
they’re june-julying

where the wind
molts like a suture
dissolved into memory

by the time
the sky’s wounds intended
the night had ended

after the thaw your jacket fell to pieces--and the season
and river wouldn't come together again

the stocker's song, with variations (or, notes from the back of the bar, part 4)

i.

shoo (fly)
semi (-landslide)

ii.

pomegranate
oxford rabbit

iii.

grey tremens
belle grappa lemons

wood anniversary

(sans desktop, i've been writing again with pen and paper, which is almost impossible with all the convoluted revising i do and has made it doubly necessary to memorize my poems--just to compose them.
today, i'm taking this chance to bring all my notes back into the public space, to record it in the e-spherics. that is, i've come to this computer that is not my own and brought a couple poems with me, and my blog is temporarily taking on the extra responsibility of being the principle place where my poems can exist until i get up the nerve to print them out and file them.

and) tonight i celebrate my fifth wedding anniversary, 10 days after jackson's first birthday. here, then, are two occasional poems--to wit:
.
.
.
for the first year
i watched and waited

and for four times five (a score)
i ran toward and o'er the ocean

now, for five more
i've tracked back, elated

traveling both ways at once
to beat out a path

and part the jealous grass
for a certain other oneandonly

someone i can think of, like you
whenever i feel lonely
.
.
.
i learned to whisper
before my tongue first dressed
your green branches
and before i had eyes to guess
who i was whispering to
i knew
the tree was a song, and
its tonic verboten

o, stars fall through the grey spheres
to interrogate the wind
while you play in your crib
like some adamic lunatic, turning
an unnamed piece of tin
and thunder brings
sunday's mothspume and thorndrift
traffic greeting the sex of the rain

tonight, when i undress you in the sink
and comb a razor through your hair
i look out the bathroom window
at a yellow wall, and think
i've seen this all before

gospel is to stress position, as euphemism is to ____

religion is a metaphor
and metaphor is a euphemism

notes from the back of the bar, part 3

corzo--
after a black+blue harvest
the hills blush
silver...invisible

balvenie--
cooper and coppersmith
convene in 2 woods
to marry

chimay--
hairshirt
on a road oft
trappist traipsed:

pama--
granate blossoms
tumbling from the
big rock's sleeves

woodford--
impotent new orleans
triumphed, and a dwarf
retreated beyond the pale

larressingle--
black oak, finesse
the grace from me
let me sleep 700 yrs

blanton's--
eunuch's footrace
yields a century's
private spoils

june-july

i don't believe in ghosts or telepaths, but i've no doubt mother nature does. and i do believe time and distance have their designs upon us which take all our logical and ethical energies to overcome.

leaving the house to-day, i was surprised to walk out into the noonday sun and see the linty daystars flying and the poplars june-julying (a south-african phrase for trembling (june-july is the middle of winter in s. africa)) for the first time since last year, laying their claim to jamaica plain and roslindale square. this is the true rite of summer restarting, and something i previsioned last winter when the hills were still covered in shells of shellacked snow. the poles (north+south) and the seasons (ovidian) are collapsible.

my son isn't ready yet to pattern his confusion, having just come to the borderline of his first year postpartum. but the shifting constellations of the cosmos came down around his head again to-day just like they did almost a year ago.
.
.
.
the strong calls of the robins

hawthorn, chinese elm, birch, weeping willow
straddling a trail through the poplars
all sleeping standing up now, like horses
in blankets of snow

but in another season, the poplars let loose another snow