Reblogged from Briarcat:

Nathan Gatewelder Longs for Spring “which in our case we have not got”* Nathan Gatewelder put away childish things became a member in good standing, an adult with sensible shirts and foolish ones, and a dog, white with brown splotches, who came whenever called. But, in the summer Nathan longed for spring He moved from an apartment to a brick house with an attached garage, a green lawn mower, a small maple tree with fringed plum copper leaves, and an attic filled with someone else’s past. And in the winter …

haibun of the park by the river

The park beside the river grew from a trolley terminus.  The sweltering left the city heart for shady paths and river breezes.  Acres of wooded hills merged with carefully designed wilderness studded with new-made ruins.  Photographs show belle époque ladies and their white-suited gentlemen boating on the small lake, drinking foaming beers beneath the sycamores.

the iron cook stove glows 

Sunday’s cool alfresco lunch,

chicken must be fried

Searching for stone remains of those more gracious days, I pass two old women fishing, one from the bench of a picnic table near the water fountain by the low earthen dam, the other perched on an upturned bucket, a can of coca cola by her foot.  Three naiads, dressed for a run, stop me to ask if I’ve seen a nymph about so high.  Their cousin is making them late.  Again.
I promise to hurry her along if I see her.
Across the narrow lake, a woman and three children throw torn white bread into the lake to a loud cluster of mallards, muscovies, and the descendants of fluffy yellow ducklings sold as gifts.

crucifiction-named,

passion flowers vine purple

in the wild privet

Somewhere up the hill from where the lodge once stood, overgrown by honeysuckle and briar, is a root-heaved terrace where people once would congregate, chatting while they dipped healing waters from the spring.  The nymph balances on broken stone, lost in their era’s liquid voice.

Because I felt compelled
to tell you that the voices
you’d be hearing from the bedroom
would be me, and poetry, pretending we
could understand each other if we spoke aloud,
and you should not construe this
as a mental health emergency

I now begin to wonder
how to phrase it
when I mean the opposite.

Fibonnaci Poem

Prime Number Poem

the Fractal

Click it for a full sized view.

for We Write Poems: Window Faces

Every Time the Thirty Days of Writing Sinks In

My dreams begin writing poems, too.
They compose themselves with ruled
notebooks and pens my waking self
would kill for, and ideas.  Where do
the dreams come up with those?
wonders the dreaming part
with its feet propped up on the seat
in front of it and a box of popcorn.  No
way I could do that.  Hey! It leans
into me with an angled elbow. Don’t
forget this!  Maybe you better quit dreaming
and write this down.Then it goes back
to concentrating on the precise word
for the way the night city throws light on a cold front’s
batter or meringue of clouds roiling with change.
I, meanwhile, watch and think I should get up.

suggested by an image from the poetry jam

…a Walk in the Park

1.
The City smiles indulgently
…yes, there are stories…
…ghosts?… if you like, says the City.

2.
In the park there are old things, remains, that take the light oddly.
Crumpled temples litter the shadows, and fountains spill from basins
polished by prophecy. Every photograph covers the worked stone
with scrub trees, bush honeysuckle and ominous crannies. Snake-
like vines wrap the old growth and darken the prints like secrets.

3.
wildflower afternoon, sky day,
solitary ease and a green path.
jays, and squirrels chasing squirrels,
spots of sun in the shade scatter
light–crumbled sandstone, mica,
quartz; like crystal glitter in the damp shade of the woods.

4.
a stroll following the contour of the hill, following thin paths
the deer take between meadows. dogs go hunting rabbits
and return home on thin paths. curious girls find strange old
coins in the dirt, and round rocks filled with jewel color. a stroll
over the hill’s shoulder. from behind in the sun, around and down,
playground echoes–like puppies barking for balls and sticks.

5.
humming along: zip-a-dee-ay, penny lane, singing in the rain.
now and then singing a snatch: and I feel fine.
stumbled.
over air
or solid rock that disappeared, tumbled, tumbled
head down, butt up, came up scraped, embarrassed
that the sky had seen such klutziness and underwear.

6.
She sat on a rock.
She felt pitiful.
Perhaps she was.
The fluffy clouds
hardened and sank low.
Leaves showed their backs
in sudden flutterings,
but the air where she sat
on the angular rock was dense with threat, smelling ancient
and dark.

7.
When you are bruised. Your ankle turned under you,
or your father died, or your wife found someone better.
When you have no desire to get up out of the dirt.
There are no jobs, anyway. Everyone knows you’re
worthless, and soil everything you touch. When
it might be broken, it hurts so much.

8.
Easy smooth as flowing over brown pebble, a light,
a voice, paper skin like peels of bark, a hand
under that useless chicken wing elbow. Stand.
Stand up. It will be all right. Come and stay
a while inside the hill. Smell the rain coming?

9.
When hard thunder shakes you to standing from a sound sleep,
there in your skin is early man, ready to fight or turn tail, fast.
The times when nothing happens, you don’t even need to close windows,
you feel a little foolish. More, if you realize that you screamed.
And, to be a guest in a strange room lit by flashes is made worse
when the host taps on the doorframe: all right in there?

10.
Sometimes, I wake, aching more than the night before,
as always,
to the same dogs and pigeons and garbage truck,
staring at the same ceiling cracks, seeing the same
window panes that still need washing, and wonder
how did I get here?

The Ordinary Guy

after William Carlos Williams
_______Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

According to Brueghel
All the Flemish Greeks
ignored flailing Icarus.

Then we see homeless men
drown to save lapdogs,
and commuters risk hell

to roll a car, burning,
about to explode,
off a maybe dead man.

Icarus who would rise
melted like candlewax
on Chianti, and fell.

Proud Superman,
who would die, rather
than want their help.

They turn away to bless you.

Bruegel Landscape with the Fall of Icarus