Doodle Restored

I have let ivy
Grow across a
Disused door.

Refraction In Twilight

Evening enters
Our garden on rails
From an easement
Between inquisitive
Eucalyptus  and
Welcome winter night.
It rolls under cloud-lit
Heights singing over
Distant ringing steel.
I hear wheels, a
Train, far away
In a promise of rain.

Pleaching For Shelter

Where time
Expands space,
We touched
Hands, joined ways,
And to that
Touch entrusted
All our days.

In Norma's Garden 2

Mutual induction, a
Production of 
Bellpeppers and
Beans and, as
To what it means, she looks at
Me and says, "Something fun."
She is done talking --I 
Am left to see this gaze
At me in evening glow
And am amazed, ahead of 
Night, that she has got
My shadows right.

Halloween Poem --Pile de Volta

Our poems are wordstacks.
Each voltaic pile,
Once read, is replaced by
Something more --why?
What do we do this for?
One forces a charge
Up a column of copper
And disks of zinc.
One arranges in proper
Order all large and small
Ideas --one thinks
And puzzles then learns
To write all over again.
Each irreducible spark
Awaits its sudden arc
From foil layers in a 
Leyden Jar, what a poem is
And what we are --ideas. 

 

Holographic Equation

Why not extend
In all directions?
Leaves rattle in nut trees.
If a shadow winks
Once, one deduces
Autumn, and all things
Hide in yellow
Light where late
Summer slipped out
A weedy gate.
Fall heals something
No one knew was injured,
Something heat can't kill.
Dreams endure and will
Always slide like a
Ouija planchette across
Seasons, not led but
Followed by reason.

"There will be no 'Keep off the Grass' signs."

[Title quote, John McClaren (b.1846--), gardener in perpetuity, Golden Gate Park]
             *******************

I am by the sea
And behind me
Is another garden--
One of McClaren's
Windpumps serving
Australian rhododendron,
Cypress,  cedar from
Lebanon-- gnarled roots
Squeezing sand into soil
In this world away, another
Land, here, under
Alien weather, rooted,
Drew life and clutched
These dunes together.

 

A Polite Refusal To Succumb To Drought

  [Dedicated to Leonard Knight --1931-2014-- indomitable gardener, artist]

Calpatria, Camp Dunlap slabs,
South of Salton Sea, adobe,
Straw, paint and persistence--
He secured dunes in plaster and
That meant much to me.
A world changes, as do we,
And Salvation Mountain is
Hope fixed in memory.

History

Among gardenias
And jasmine
In our garden,
Sunlit histories
Secure a
Hummingbird's
Sure use of
The moment.

Solar Lights (Night Shift 2)

This summer night
Stars snag in lath, climb
Latent paths ahead of
Light,  a plume of
Entropy --of time.
Their songs stir
Our steaming sea.
At dawn atoms of fall
Cling to the garden and
Work awaits me.

Bedtime Protest

Above our garden
Light took over ragged
Clouds,  tried for
Some time to hide
And still got dragged 
From inside -- down
Sky, as all light turns
Back around behind its
Dreaming eye of night.

Carmen Miranda Beet

Something to do with drought,
With heat, she goes out and
Digs a Carmen Miranda beet
Dancing under bees -- her
Husband,  half Portuguese,
Keeps time with his feet.

Of You Is

Over an olive tree
Is sky, and 
I reflect no 
Disturbance.
Is it dance or some
Illusion, some fusion
Of light and ideas?
In a really good house
Of mirrors, you only
Know where the
Inside of you is.

Whirlwind, Listen

[Normavideo backdoor garden pirouette]

Clockwise,  a whirlwind over me.
Its walls warm, center calm--
A memory of an old embrace,
Upturned face, a smile-- and
I walk with it a while, birdsong.
I recall a kiss and think, yes,
We were supposed to do this.

Last Train Inland

                       (San Pablo Bay from train)

Last train inland drew
Us late from the shore.
We could stay, do more
Or wait until dawn ahead
Of summer heat, move on.
Yet,  we delayed all  day
Leaving, found other things
To  do  --my  love  of 
Moonlit  evenings  is
Part of  loving  you. 

Out Our West

Out our west window
One plum and another
One appears -- in
An astragal  of spheres
Arranged a good deal
Like planets under 
Sun --to reel and 
Dance around a line.
I must conclude cosmos,
Chance and plum trees
Turn on a common
Axis, and share design.

Rock Point, 3 A.M.

An electric path--
To be what one was
At trailhead in
Night-sea crossing--
Under the moon
Between black crashes,
Incandescent corridor
Of not-to-be and west
Away from memory.
Something takes flight,
Swift, silver.
Rest of me turns east
And out of night.

Enjambment, A Backporch Poem

Leaves applauding in a breeze
Echo the sea and I see evening
Sun infuse our wood with
Early summer light.
Soon it will be night --brings
Stars, sound and memories
Under raucous trees --can
Remember the breaking
Granite bones of earth, and
New oceans and flowing,
Floating, growing where nothing
Stood before in our wood. 

Now Is Simply

[Normavideo: Poppy shifting in breeze]
https://youtu.be/U6QMEW67EPQ

Now is simply not
Big enough for everything
To happen in.
Wind begins and ends
Elsewhere and extends
Elsewhen with flowers
In its future --flowers
Where it has been.  

Quantum Gardening

Rain on a canna lily leaf
Finds a world curved
Into everything, time,
Mind, events that
Serve life, make it full.
The world is not flat.
Tree trimming or
Tending irrigation in
A boggy hole, up, down,
The compass points are
Always with you.
You can't go in one
Direction without
The others too.

She Is Right

She says,
"Families are grown
like gardens."
She is right.
One seeks siblings
Scattered across
Divides -- time,
Land and sea--
Life in possibility,
What seeds are.
This garden
Grows around a star.
I am more in light,
Real in a way
I had not
Been before.
She is right.

[Normaphoto]

At the bucket you painted
Blue by the pumphouse door.
Whatever I came out here for
Escapes me --and photography
Captures reverie or me
Staring at my shoe. It's fun
To fall in love with you.

O young Opossum

O young Opossum you,
In my lanai bamboo,
Cower over blossoms
Where evening brings
An end to hiding, soft,
Unhurried --stay aloft
And don't be worried. 

Rail Therapy, Inspecting The Continuum

Time and space propagate in all
Directions, and then, when done
Get up and do it again --time emits
Time, divides itself, displaces space
As motion does mass.
Good, there are times 
I need a kick in the past--
Which is hard on brains and why
I ride trains: therapy between
Points A and B confined to steel
Defines reality in terms of there
And here, and they serve beer.

              ************************
For a superior lyric and story, please run this vid of Guthrie performing a Steve Goodman song that has, in the past 45 years (a magic number matching my wedding anniversary tomorrow), become something between an anthem and hymn to this great land.
 
 

 

And, yes, don't have my specs on but believe that's Pete Seeger on banjo.

Field Care And Turbo At Four

Our reception of time,
In unseen circuitry
And green antennae
Over seed.
We grow, need.
Potentials isolated,
Rhythms set:
Birth, thought teach
Us each greater
Creations, creators--
But none equal
The incomparable
Force of not being, then
Being --isolated, set--
Which of course
We promptly forget.

Portable

Not so much memory
Or destination or
Station stagnant
In a poem --what
Is home but finding
Our place in
The journey?
Moved among moving
Stars, a trajectory,
We become.

Early Days

Recombinant garden in
Mingled ends, starts --
A function of character
Among magical arts-- and
An enchanted riddle living
In the middle, giving, giving.

Missing Jones and Y2K

When I was a boy of fifty,
Jones the cat would find
My lap wherever I sat and
Share his habitual nap --
His posture toward existence.
And, at his insistence, 
I too would slip consciousness.
We were friends, I guess.

Gardening Problems: What To Do!

What to do when
Half the galaxy gets
Snagged in your olive tree:
Relax, examine peripheries
For what tangles let
Fall  and roll free.
It's small, very very
Like a glowing berry
Escaped from its spoon.
Pick it up, it is the moon. 
Throw it way up high.
The stars will chase it
Up, up into the sky.

 

Moontree

There is a moontree on
Our property that only 
Grows one, then it's done,
According to need-- the
Rest  goes  to  seed.
You see, when the moon
Wears out --but hasn't
Yet-- one is all one gets.
We will not go without.

She Photos

                                                            [Normaphoto]                                                                    
She photos  frost
On tabletops and
Days stunned  in
Frozen  sunshine
Out  the window.

                                                                   [Normaphoto]

Fog Shovelers

In mind, invisible
Fog shovelers scrape
A path clear and pile
Divisible mist on
Either side, allowing
Me, defined as here.
I am following behind
This, and upon that
Path, decide to go
And pursue order.
What lies past its
Borders, I don't know.

Twitter

                                     [Normavid of a chippering chorus --crank up volume]

Sudden colonies in 
Low branches-- 
Bushtits, finches-- 
Full of discussion, 
Oration, midwinter 
Debate 'til late 
Afternoon; each 
Chirp opening new 
Warbles ahead 
Of a rising moon.