No blanket for me:
big cat, oven-hot, pressed to
my heart – all I need.
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Monthly Archives: September 2014
From the fishpond
2
I. Seasons
(A poem in four linked haiku)
We orange, we silver,
we brazen dazzlers twisting
around Summer’s knees:
gold torpedoes flirt
with air and blue sky, black bugs
sucked from water’s lip
into hungry throats.
A daily feast of algae.
We grow fat. But now
comes Fall. Beware – and
clupe with bulging eye on the
hand in Winter’s glove.
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(A feeding behaviour common to carp is called “cluping”. Cluping carp are sucking whatever is caught in the water’s surface film – anything, in fact, that looks reasonably natural. While feeding, they may be in shoals of six to more than 100 fish, and they can be located with binoculars or heard at distances of up to 100 yards. Source: http://pyramidlakefisheries.org/fishmap/carp.html)
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Geese, again.
Geese, again. The skies
are letting summer fly through
rents in pewter clouds.
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Those tenacious tendrils
Squash plants: how the tendrils cling
fiercely to the nearest thing
persistently insinuating
yet with the merest touch.
Climbing up the chain link fence
their daintiness is all pretense
the weight they hold – it makes no sense!
They’re strong as Jean Valjean.
Melons, gourds, meaty orange Hubbards
will soon be resting in our cupboards
that is, if we can move those mothers:
those tenacious tendrils.
***
Audio version: http://bit.ly/1y2ebId
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Mabelline the dancing queen
was real sweet, she didn’t mean
to make a mess,
but when she saw
the earth, she couldn’t stop her paw
from digging down and shovelling up
mountains of the rich, wet stuff
until the plant sagged toward the ground
and silt and soil piled all around.
Then, with her tail puffed up for joy,
Mabel grabbed her favourite toy
and threw herself, while Mommy slept,
entranced
into the dirt dance.
~
In the morning, before dawn,
still dark, not a lightbulb on,
stumbling awake, Mom promptly trod
directly through those piles of sod.
She tracked them through the house and then
she turned and tracked them back again!
Wondering at her kitten’s glee,
Mom flicked the switch, so she could see…
and after she had sighed, and wept
took her broom and carefully swept…
while Mabel
entranced
threw herself into the dirt dance.
~
Audio version: http://bit.ly/1tWqlOD
Written when Mabel was just wee, and published for her sixth birthday, 2014
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