Spring Poems – 2009, 2010

Cherry Tree falls down Celery-Root Cellar Door

If poems are just

something, a test of time,

then the one who judges life

can judge a poem, then a

Chestnut tree is not a tree,

nor a birch, a cherry tree,

then a orange is a grapefruit,

a apple, a brown pear.

Then you or I are

just a something the breeze

blows. A misquote lies dead,

the last of the prehistoric dragons

from long ago.

Laying dead on a plant,

things die same as they lie.

~ ~ ~

Painting, oil – By Sammy Al Mongo

Misquote of Nature

If life has misquoted you

then live the rest of your life

in a final bow to the audience,

who never purchased a ticket for

your live show, some people never

get no ticket, just fell out of

their hands, and they went to a

different show, someone else

can take a bow. We just become

trees that bend and bow by the wind.

Better to speak loudly the first time,

that no way, life will not misquote.

Why bark peels off trees,

dogs bark at night on a yellow moon.

~ ~ ~

Lucia Steel, Painting by Sammy Al Mongo, oil

The Cardinal and his Wife

Same cardinals, husband and wife

flit on this 45-degree angle

across my property, as if the same

leaf blew by the wind.

The end is always the same,

must spring happen each time

for the cardinal’s vector

over the same branches,

where these cardinals sleep

in winter is where a bird’s dream

goes on forever, some night

inside a tree waiting

for my eyes to open each April

~ ~ ~

Painting, oil, by Sammy Al Mongo

In the minds eye

a whisper thought,

then spring is something

unnatural from a misunderstanding

between light and dark,

that space where a baby is

born from, a huff and then

earth just sits still, as if

breathing and birds swooping

means the same thing

~ ~ ~

If only spring could last forever,

then our life perpetual in non-decay

would never notice what happens,

humbles an old tree,

its limbs cut down by

storms, so wind that blows

chimes each night signal.

Another star that died in space,

storms that come from behind

have no barrier to keep things, our lives

in place. Spring comes and goes, so as the winds say so.

~ ~ ~

It’s just me…

I

It’s just me and the Trees.

There’s never been people, or love,

just still trees standing upwards.

piano notes, wings that sift

murmur come and go.

People come and go outside my

window, stark leafless branches

sway not to wind, just moving

to a murmur of my unconsciousness love

to nature, and the sap that bleeds

from a bulge

It’s just me and the trees

nothing else, no one’s love but

this branch, animals, life

answering like a song and chord,

sung long ago, a blood line cut

so no one listens or looks.

It’s just me and the trees.

II

Forty-eight years looking, climbing,

dodging falling trees.

There’s a message in every

fallen limb, every branch

cracked by  the wind, each

stump flowers and weeds grow

from something someone thought

was dead, a nuisance, where

what only cares is the flower

coming from seeds cracked open.

The old trees shade the younger trees

between this stands me,

ever evolving. When a young tree

snaps a twig, it grows again

each spring. This old tree where a

limb snaps it becomes my

broken finger, always crooked,

never to be stitched back by nature.

III

Each tree has stumps growing,

a bulge where animals burrow,

leaves in the spring bud, shade for

insects in the summer, firewood for

any cold bones in winter.

Slow growth is a good measurement of time.

below ground level, where roots are just branches

seeking opposite of sunlight,

something for the earth to

hold on when an old

tree lets go.

~  ~ ~

Jamaican Baptist Funeral

Compelled to drink absinthe on a full moon.

Aggravated to take a day of from the world.

We all live in some escape world while in captivity.

At a Jamaican Baptist funereal they laid

the old man in the earth. The brass pole

spun slowly to allow the casket lower.

These brass poles creaks an old spiny

long, endless squeal, same as a lifeboat

being lowered from a ship. We all listened to the rolling noise and allow time that ends

in a slow creaking. It’s always making that noise, we only just hear this

at the end.

The oldest Jamaican man in his 90′s ambled up the burial plot late,

a woman said to him:

“Where is your Johnny Walker cane?”

“Who dat der da oldest man not sitting, where’s your Johnny Walker cane?”

He smiled and stood there knowing he

would not be next.