Victor for a Day

Another installment in The Further Chronicles of the Tomato Garden! It appears that the seventh plague has fallen upon the house of Israel, and God has punished the unbelievers with blossom-end rot. This cancer begins as an innocuously off-colour spot on the bottom of the green tomato, but, as the tomato matures, spreads out, leprous-like, until the entire lower half of the ripe tomato is a festering, black cesspit of evil. Fortunately, this is not caused by any parasite or disease, but simply by a lack of calcium in the soil. Unfortunately, the only immediate solution is to amputate the affected fruit to prevent the leeching of nutrients from healthy tomatoes, then saturate the soil with a calcium supplement and pray that the angel of death passes over. So far, about a third to half of our present ripening crop has been affected, but forecasts for the future are good, thanks to the quick response of the ministering angel known as Quiet Cartesian. Up, up, and away!

Victor for a Day

I came upon a little friend,

a monument of care,

who found it fit to condescend

a smile on me, there.

I lifted her and laid her by,
as pardon for my plea,

upon a bower bed, to lie

in limpid reverie,

and stole her dowry from the store

that she had set aside;

no guard was set upon the door,

no bulwark for the bride.

A smile, and a dowry paid,

and so I slipped away,

to tell the treasure, and the raid -

a victor for a day.

A Flower

And so the school year begins. I send you on your way with a poem and a thought, and a day early, at that!

A Flower

A flower you are not,

and flower never be,

in Autumn fault forgot,

till Summer guarantee.

You do not spread your brow

beneath the beryl sky,

but flowers bear no vow

and flowers surely die.

Your floret and perfume

shall not disperse with frost.

My love, you are a bloom

that time cannot exhaust.

One Shall Remain

If you measure Summer by the school year, then it is fast coming to a close, but in truth, it is barely half-over. A sure sign of this is our vegetable garden, which is, in actuality, more of a tomato garden. For a week or two, now, we've had a small trickle of ripe fruit, but I can sense that trickle is about to become a torrent. I wait for few things like I do the ripening of the tomatoes. Perhaps it's the Italian in me - or the hippie - but I honestly believe almost every dish is made better by fresh, home-grown tomatoes. In fact, they hardly need accompaniment. Their flavor, alone, is enough to make them tastier than the ripest apple or pear. Your whole self is awakened in the experience of a tomato garden - nose full of the ripe, earthy scent of the wet leaves, hands stained green from the stalks, shoes heavy with damp earth...

Did I mention we also have chili peppers?

One Shall Remain

A word or two, I took no more,
and lingered on them all the less -

though they revealed a fair rapport
of days undrawn in loveliness,
soft-spoken, as before -

and thought that I might metre on,
against the turning of the vein -

a grand and burnished paragon
that owns a pearl to be plain,
as even it, withdrawn -

but what a lunacy to bleed

the vessel of its liberty -

my seeming wealth could not exceed

such light and bantam poverty,

when I, alone, make need -

for, if I could allow embrace,

then I might bear a wider yoke -

no words of mine can clear a place,

nor sound escape the closing choke,

unless by other grace -

but, as it is, a heart is mine,

and, somehow, whispered over all -

when I have missed the siren sign

of words that I cannot recall,

one shall remain, and shine,

however small.

King and Slave and I

It has been such an odd couple weeks. First, day after day of blazing, sunburnt heat - the sort that turns bedrooms into midnight saunas and makes even a drive with the windows down a blistering chore - and now, Autumn-like clouds and chill, and I couldn't be happier for the change. It does bring a melancholy feel to these downhill days of Summer, but it is a soft, gentle decline, and, anyways, I'm quite sure we haven't seen the last of the sun.

King and Slave and I

The days are wide and windy as the sea,

as waves and hours roll in steady swell

to delegate our duties. Slaved and free

the two compel.

A king can drop his knee to genuflect,

and, yet, the flux will draw him further down,

till he is, equally, a base subject,

of no renown.

The slave, alike, is made a slave again,

when cast into the fierce and fathomed tide,

where fluid bonds supplant a sturdy chain

and breaths subside.

And I, though neither king nor slave I be,

am subjugated strictly, as the two,

for hours set their ocean-weight on me

and so subdue.

Then I am yoked by time, in spring and neap,

and king and slave and I are spiraled low,

to rest our common heads in common sleep,

as hours flow.

Two Trees

I was walking though the woods, near my family's home in Southwest Washington, when I discovered a beautiful, old tree. I have no idea what type it was, nor quite how old, but it was almost entirely bare of leaves, and there was hardly a straight line to be seen on it. It was bent over at a sharp angle, and beneath it, growing through its thick branches, was a much younger tree, which is probably the only reason it was still standing at all.

Two Trees

There is a tree, not far from here;

its stature, lower press,

is labored by a long career

of weary wilderness.

No stately back nor seasoned crown,

no callow consecrate

establishes its bearing down,

when burdened by the weight

of limbs divested, twist they so

that liveliness, alone,

declines the scattered buddings grow

and proves a weaker bone.

Its final strength, upon the eve

of fell majority,

is taken from the buttress heave

of this, a younger tree,

that holds the old man up, aloft,

and supplements the might

the other lost, as age is oft;

but here, the two have height.

Fate

I picked up one of my volumes of Emily Dickinson the other day; it was the first time in months that I'd touched it. I'd forgotten how stunning her poetry is. Her name has, unfortunately, been connected with saccharine poems about bees and flowers. This could not be further from the truth. Open a book of her poetry at random, and the chances of finding something fit for 'Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes' are minimal, at best. You are far more likely to find yourself enfolded in delicate and complicated word-play, with hints of Hopkins and Eliot, and subjects too serious for any child to fully appreciate. So for those of you who have never read Dickinson, I encourage you to begin, and for those who have read and rejected, I beg you to look again.

Fate

Our fate is not for hands and eyes;

its score

we hope to settle, willful-wise.

No more

can turning back the ticking face

make rest

the heavens in their steady pace

to west,

for feet can only fall within

the groove,

and, ceasing to resist, begin

to move.

Hope

I'm on something of a sonnet kick. Shakespeare had it right, you know. It really is the perfect rhyming scheme. Three verses; it is, inescapably, the right number. Any less, and one is left wanting; any more, and one grows tired. And yet, three is not enough to bring the poem to completion, for the reader, taken by the constancy of the rolling rhymes, inevitably expects one stanza to lead to another. Something must break this cycle, and so, the final two lines. Thus, the sonnet is fulfilled, and both the poet and reader are satisfied.

Hope

If love, in longing, found a holy hand,

as palm and palm, profaner than the eye,

enfold and follow, as the two demand,

and make communion in a mute reply,

or if it sought a cheek of softer flesh

than falls upon this settling embrace,

prepared to offer up, and so enmesh,

as ought to marry hearts in happy grace,

or if it heard, again, a hushing breath,

unfinished until breathed afresh in turn

by other lips that long for sober death,

when told to love will only be to yearn,

then there is hope that heaven will arise,

although it be obscured in mortal guise.