Monday, May 7, 2018

ENCOMPASS ~





Time Passes Slowly






Breezy naked

Under a red

Summer dress



You will soon

Kiss me but

First point 



To four goldfinches

On a wire close enough

As if watching us



Their colors faded

From a week ago like

These autumn hills 








All That Thunder 





Wouldn’t you know — I was scything deep in the backyard around the wood’s edge and many of the flower beds, when the thunderstorm caught me flat out in the open, shoulder high with Jerusalem artichoke flowers and nowhere else to go. For a moment I ran under a tall ash tree, bundled beside a maple and its large leaf cover. Rain was coming down steady and cold. I took the scythe with me and ran for the outhouse. Kept the door open and watched the rain, the roof tip-tapping. I noticed that Sweetheart had run for the woodshed from her garden work and was standing there waiting for the thunder and rain to pass. It wasn’t working that way, instead it was settling in, darkening the sky, eclipsing the river valley. We waved to one  another. I then sat back on the bench, looked at all the faces and small posters and pictures tacked on the walls over the years. There’s Pete Seeger, there’s Dorothy Day, there’s Madonna’s large green eye peek-a-boo out of blond hair. There’s Sweetheart! she’s come with an umbrella to rescue me out of my rain cave. But instead of heading home we run up to another cottage, deeper in the woods, furious with a steel roof in the rain and fall asleep awhile in each others arm’s and all that thunder.





She Comes To Me This Way






In her stocking feet and the

Pleats of her skirt, the way

The blouse is plain and opened

At the sand of her throat and her

Face is burned with winter and

So happy, that it is only then I

Notice something more — a

Necklace of rawhide and soapstone

Pebble, and even closer, the etch of

Turquoise on the piece, which brings

Me to her eyes . . .






Encompass






Just that slight change in her expression

Warm, tender, all mine it says, changes my life

Since childhood, years before I knew her







—————————————
BOB ARNOLD
I'm In Love With You
Who Is In Love With Me
Longhouse 2012