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
