By Ilene Kaminsky
Morning yawns and stretches its arms
To part the curtains of night.
Tired midwife to light from
From her expectant horizon
The earth inches towards her morning.
Clean, cool fingers weave threads
Of sweet perfumed wisteria and more
Unnamable long forgotten blooms.
Clean and combed through dew damp air.
Buds nodding on their stems,
Draw blood from my veins with thorns
Like cat claws after a scare.
Suddenly clouds burst and showers fall
To save dry backyards and crops
Now cut away from the view unguarded
From natures reach over treetops.
Lost years and fences already raised
Desperate for mending and tattered.
Puddled earth evicts worried worms,
Plucked by late rising birds from their
Broken homes.
While in my solitary confinement,
Within an escapable white picket fenced
Yard, I wave farewell to school busses
And to the workers who clean up the world.
Alone to remember cubes and corners
Push pinned photos, plaques of platitudes,
Email boxes and bustling buildings
Where tight schedules and bright slides
Bore like radiation into the heads of
Departments of the thoughtless and benign.
My wooden porch now a port of call for
Rain long overdue for such late afternoons.
I’m stuck in an everlasting April spring day.
As sprinklers timed soak the lawn
The sun’s last rays motion with
Long, scolding fingers at
Now unknowable faded faces
Trapped like tonight’s fish for supper
In this morning’s papers.
Laid out on a communal table
Where wisdom and innocence
Convene to discuss the current
Events of still births and deaths.
Hands engaged with wild gestures
Waving forks and spoons for effect -
Interrupting pointless chatter to flatter
And cut meat from a fatted calf.
Everyone silenced by politeness,
Sliced right through the art of the matter.
The evening’s news flickers
Behind shades of taffeta mmllooookmm
Hiding shadow boxes inside windows.
Like a sober fly in a glass of whiskey
Wet wings legs spinning drowned
The hands of its god take it down.
I walk with solitude as she unwraps
Her arms thick with compassion
Beckoning me inside for consolation.
Using one wave to cast away
Anyone who might see me crying.
We sit together on a dark park bench
Watching every creature under suburban
Skies that all fit on a single broom stick.
If no one bothers then no one counts
Things yet unseen, like angels
Atop a pin head. Yet we must believe
That stars still sparkle until the dark unveils
Who’s home and left behind
To sing unearthly cries of grief.
Arched branches bow green
Soft leaves shake and flow
From willows left weeping
While night whispers to me:
Please save us all.
As the trees fade to black,
Wind whips at my face.
From the fringes, howls
Break into my mind.
I can no longer breathe
hidden and weak
In the between
With these heavier things.