Poetry way back when I should have known better (Tres)

1.

I never liked gardens

No I never did like gardens

With a plant       here

One                                                there

With all that upturned in-between dirt

Uncomfortable under the sun.

Roses nodding amicably enough

I'll admit,

But each living up to its own (equals owner's)

Ideal

    (having no choice where there are 

no nasty weeds deep-taprooting below

the level of roses roots incidentally scaring

up precious secret substances that might

give those roses an altered hue,

an unexpected growth-change shape)

(the most beautiful-to-my-eye roses form and scent

being in the jungle behind the empty barn

in the vacant lot on Alonzo St. anyway.)

2.

Since meeting you again 

I have gone off reading

Murder mystery novels.

Now I choose

One green adolescent rattler,

Incandescent blue sky,

Mud nests buzzing with

Cliff-hanging family life,

Black and white flurry

Of freefall mating,

Straight- and low-flying

June-bug on a mission,

Scales of the giant form-free lizard,

Indeterminate dusty brown creatures

Too swift for seeing -

The unbelievable beauty of breath.

                                                                                 June 1998

3.

Rapport

Not for canvas, this

Clear blue dawn

Banded with the

Pale gold leftovers

Of last night's

Heartbroken

Rising moon.

Maybe for later, hidden

In the submerged

Smoulder of a

Glazed pot,

Rousing us from our

Afternoon's lethargy

Like the sudden

Emerging memory

Of Venus rising

From the sea

4.

The comfortable-looking woman is my age.

She is sitting across the table from me -

At McMenamins -

Over an almost finished

Reuben sandwich

Saying,

"But don't you have a sense of

Twilight approaching?"

I look down at my plate.

I have been pleasantly visited lately

By images of Tess

Threshing in the gloaming

Of a golden English countryside.

I have been invaded lately

By a sense of the beauty of those

Fruit-laden fields

And the coming darkness.

But right now

I am looking down at my plate.

I have a sandwich that is almost whole

And I feel it is barely 1:30

In the afternoon

Of the longest day

Of a long Oregon

Summer.

5.

American Leopard

A black jaguar is invading my room,

Churning up my bed,

And in a pivoting spring

Hurtling headlong at my

Closed wooden door.

I am terrified for him

For one split-second

Before he is through it

And out -

The ghost of a jaguar

Leaping back and forth

Unhurt and undeterred

Through the walls of my cabin.

He is wild.

He knows no boundaries

And I can erect no barriers

That will keep him away;

But I am coming awake

In a warm pink dawn

Watching not even a ghost

 But a mere dream

Of a ghost.

The jaguar is not looking at me.

He is hunting on a phantom plain

I cannot see,

And I am not his prey.