SELF-EMPLOYED ~

Changes

Under the waterfall

Leaves finally reach

Bottom and stay put,

Every known foliage

Puffed into a hive

May strike you dizzy

When the sun is on them

And water above flows

Clear, the shaken colors

Point into your eyes

First winter light  







Self-Employed



Take two squared stones and

Drop them almost side by side

Lift the thinner slab of rock and

Bust your guts setting it on top

Now you got reason to sit down

 

Bobolink

He watches my entry

Down the tilt of pasture

Clumps of mud sinking rubber boots,

Chain saw load and fuel jugs,

Holds an eye on me

In his one position.

When I set to work he sets to work,

Drops off the long spring of telephone wire.

Through the day picks at brush piles, goes

Back onto the wire, withstands the heat, watches.

It is only when the saw is shut down I hear what

He says, the scale of whistles both sharp

And gentle to the ear, no one pitch alike, perhaps

The voice of many birds together, in this new one who

Peers down as I leave and now stars to sing.

 

Treeplanter

Never see how —

But see how —

The pine tree

Has grown a foot

Since a year ago

_________________

Bob Arnold

some of these poems appeared in

Self-Employed

handset letterpress from

Pentagram