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Writer, Poet
Now we twine,
shuttle a weft
through an othertime,
a slow woofian dance
of emerging design.
As coral gathers
enlightening seabrine,
we channel this loom,
uncarding
for the low calm of reminiscence,
a tapestry iridescent with sunbright.
Rage
obsessed Demeter
as she scoured the earth
for her stolen child.
“Eat,”
he ordered
thrusting the platter of fruit
before her.
From the bitter pomegranate
she plucked a seed,
bit,
and drew its influence . . .
Perhaps it was choice.
That spring
driven by bittersweet images
(fruit of his touch)
she repulsed her mother
and went to the wildflowers.
Pushed on by Desire
she summoned Charon
who ferried Her
to a meeting with Him
out of season.
“Grave,”
her mother had said.
So He looked.
Next to Demeter
what else could He seem?
Yet against the light
He provided a shade and
a silence
where more could be learned
than Demeter ever told
with all her woodsy chatter.
Mid-summer you’d find us
rumbling down roads in old Chevies and Pontiacs,
turning graveled backways in a spew of dust
spit out like a jeer towards that town
we hated in July.
It huddled,
cooled-air conditioned,
relatives shaded in rooms draped with curtains,
wilting, like lawns, from a yellowed stupor
exuded by hot rays’ dance on the river’s glazed surface.
We went inland,
inwards toward the triple-tiered foliage
of a creek bed’s canopy. Picked our way
with a casual courage
down black-onyx trails of serpented tree roots
silverned branches
to a place where whitewater split
an ochre sun’s sheen
with a noisy applause
that greeted our arrival.
There merged in jacuzzi-swirled waters,
bodies drifted
while slow breezes carried
the long sighing “ca-aaw” of a crow,
deep “cro-oak” belched from a frog’s throat.
Some fools swam in the refracted light of late afternoon.
By sunset, bodies bloated, red-fevered tongues babbled
over “you-u-u” who didn’t love her anymore,
struck out against
that “sonofabith who’s messin with me.”
Late evening
muffled conversations begun under tree-shadow
fell in tune with the loon,
then faded with the heat
offering no answer
as they disappeared into shadow
to the recurring
“who-hoot” of the owl.
August
algae crawled over the creek, stifling its whitewater with putrid shrouds of moss.
Air thickened, grew listless, creeped up
and settled
around where we lingered,
packing our cars, anxious to leave
but reluctant to start back for town.
“Dog days,” we muttered, unaware the Sirian star calumnied
had pulsed through our summer, inspiring its brightness,
lost now in the darkness of a new moon night.
