Fast Day 312 May 25 2013 {Memorial Day 2013}

Black-eyed Susans or Rudbeckia

Memorial Days 2013

Let me lay beneath a tree in May,
and read a book of knowledge-charms,
runes of an age when arms
entwined in love and did not slay.

Let me sleep within an alchemy,
and dream a dream of harmless days
and nights of love amaze,
far from a violent blasphemy.

Alembic days and nights' crucible,
mixed together and enswirled,
earth of the common world:
flee the mundane irreducible!

Wild flowers prodigality!
Mr. Rudbeck’s asters!
Black-eyed Susans in the pastures
with tiger originality!

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notes

I put this up, then I reworked it, making the second and third lines rhyme, because I had already done so in the first stanza, although I was not aware of it.

This marks 6 years, and I am glad I stuck with it. There have been some fine phrases as well as some ghastly, plodding bleats.

tiger  =   with tints of orange 

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Fast Day 311 May 18 2013___ It's Sunday!

 Billy Sunday

It's Sunday !

socks out the door and down the steps !
limestone metalled steps -
yah its Sunday !
Sunday best and go to meeting
day of rest and and Sabbath
restaurant eats and
going golfing
old-timey days of anti-macassars !
Sunday puritan
leather on my foot and out the door
you kin buy some booze
on Sunday
at the mega mall
where everyone works on Sunday...

Brick-makers, brass-founders, blacksmiths, and basket-makers,
brick and stone-masons, boiler-makers, butchers, and book-binders,
bakers, brewers, box and icechest-makers,
they don’t work,
but ya kin buy booze on Sunday....
earth attraction from the magnetism
of my front door… and socks
salt iron fish coal and lumber
used to be my trade
but we rest on Sunday
and tetotall temperance
socks out the door
after a shower and shave
its no-shop sunday !

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Fast Day 310 May 11 2013 Spring Grass Dance___Mothers' Day 2013

Spring Grass Dance
Mothers' Day 2013

Come, come and rejoice, I call you!
Come and enjoy the spring, I bid you!
Rich in black and gold oriole,
chased in scarlet robin,
inlaid with ebony blackbirds:
ample-talking birds of Spring!
Sky-dancing and singing subtle airs!
come, roll out the green carpet,
shag rich in new verdure!
Come and enjoy Mothers’ Day,
I bid you all, to that feast
so much all-utterly song!

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Fast Day 309 May 4 2013: Opening The Summer Home 2013

 

The Summer Kitchen

Opening The Summer Home  2013

Not once since the world war
had the cottage been opened up
without my father’s being there;
we withdrew the white covers
from the wicker furniture,
wakened up the pantry once again,
fed the hibernated larder,
electrical clocks and TV hum…
oven flat-lined from a long PF !
was it not? wow, was it not ?
old grains muttering and stretching
the ancient joints and tenons,
waking once again to the nurses of Spring
which lead them Lazarus-like to Summer!

What a mutated thrill there was, and
what a sense of recondite suspense,
as if we came to Bethany and bid this house,
half asleep and half dead
from the somnium of Winter...
the royal underworld of snow and ice…
and we bid it, “Come forth,  Old Comfort!
Wake again, Old Rooming House!
Up North and Northwest Delight!”
and we paused, filled with sublime passion,
“Come, Islands of Les Cheneaux!
Fill the tree tops with your beath!”
This gingerbread Friendly Giant awoke,
and walked to the river to drink…

…like domestic cats and homespun dogs
that descend upon the summer place
and frenzy sniff and incautious demarcate,
so we felt the house came to life!
Unload and carry, store and wipe,
and feel the wainscoting belt expand
from the strict fast days of January…
roses to be unhilled, stalks to be cut,
crooked sun dials set to rights,
…not ready! my feet hurt! my back!
when we collapsed at last, the casements crashed
like post traumatic stress, “Where is he?
Not since nineteen-forty-two… !”
And we heard the one miracle close,
others went on, and a new one began...

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