Stone emerges from the mist,

sibilant like a lizard’s hiss,

then wth a moan of an ancient beast

It ends on a drone.

 

Rock is hard, a tiger’s growl,

A roar like a rising wave

Slamming against the cliff

exploding hard in spray.

 

Stone is smooth and round

to hold in your hand

weather worn,

a sacred sound.

Stonehenge is stone.

 

Rock is sharp and harsh.

Jagged, dense, a shock

Like climbing a talus slope.

Rock is secular and has

no pity.

 

She’s dancing, you know,

 the Moon,

held in an abrazo with Earth.

 

She turns in a slow colesita,

her tidal pull a caricias,

her phases, cambios defrentes

Don’t let them tell you that

it’s only a matter of

rays and retinas

and rods and

cones.

 

Nay!

 

The

apple

is red and

its isness is the

redness of the reddest

apple that you’ve ever seen.

 

 

Trees like paintbrushes

loaded with watercolor

spread gray over the sky

 

Who knows what season this is

It might be winter

late autumn or early spring

 

Could be yesterday

Do you know what day it is

Could be tomorrow

 

Paynes gray or watered-down black

it all spreads the same

on that wet linen rag sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Emperor of Purple

 

The Emperor wrapped in his purple robe

Nods on his porphyry throne.

His golden thrush sings his deeds

With a whirl of wheels and precious stones.

 

Amaranthine plums glow in the dark,

Trophies of wars with Red and Blue,

And the unforgivable defection of Maroon

In the last of the Battles of Hue.

 

The Emperor broods on his porphyry throne.

Another threat lurks on his southern frontier.

The Viceregent of Violet demands submission

And makes her claim to legitimacy clear.

 

His half-sisters Mauve and Puce are weak

And pose no threat to his crowned head.

But her bloodline is pure, the uncontested heir

Of ancient lines of Blue and Red.

 

Purple, he fears, is a Balkanized state

Surrounded by large and  powerful foes,

Violet’s more vibrant, saturated, deeper in tone,

Superior forces ready to go.

 

But the Emperior of Purple will not submit.

He has control of the ultimate source:

Sidon and Tyre where the shells of snails

Pile up on the sandy shore.

Orange

 

You want to know what orange is?

It’s October before everything gets brown.

It’s when an orange in your hand is like holding the sun

But it feels cool as the breeze is cool.

 

Orange is a full moon that’s pumpkin pie

On a faded lilac tablecloth.

Sometimes there are two full moons,

Fat and round like those Os in October

And when that happens,

That moon is blue.

Green

Just can’t make up its mind.

Among all those avocados,

Lawns, peridots, and

Go lights, you’d think it could

Decide what it wants

To be.

Red

Gives green courage.

Look at those perky

Prickly pear fruits

Rimming the flat

Green pads.

Yellow

Is forthright,

Proud, aggressive,

Tangy, shiny,

Zooming from lemon

To gold in a minute.

You can see yellow from far away.

Violet

Just lurks there

At the bottom of the

Color wheel,

Dark, brooding,

Everything that yellow

isn’t.

Are you not staggered by the beauty

of winter?

By the light defining the texture

of bare branches?

By the brilliance of Sirius

in the cold dark nights?

By the long violet shadows

and the faraway sun?

I am staggered by the stillness

and the silence.

The only motion is skittering

of birds in the scrub

and the only sound is my breathing,

waiting,

watching.

The Avocet Weekly, January 9, 2022

O those moons!
Two of ‘em in a month,
big and round like those Os in October.

October begins with a moon,
the harvest moon, big and round,
like that first O In October,

burnt orange in a pale blue sky.
Its light makes shadows of long low limbs
on deer sheltering there in October.

October ends with a moon,
The Hunter’s Moon, the Blue Moon
like that second O In October

on all Hallows’ Eve, a pumpkin lit within.
Shadows are darker now.
Other things shelter there in October.

The Harvest Moon,
The Hunter’s Moon,
The Blue Moon—
O those moons!