The Tiny Beak the Flower Bends


The hummingbird
Knows what time it is
Time to be doing
Efficient as day
She collects what the world has to offer
She is a worker of time, paid by the hour
She has no hours to waste
She blazes her tiny light, burns for the blossom
Seizes the day in her needle-point proboscis
Inspects, rejects, takes where she finds it
Shops a garden in a minute, rages hungry for the next
Flies the tiny skies of creation toward the paradise of tomorrow
Migrates hundreds of miles, wings whirring beyond the odometers of man --
Creation's fool!
To the haven of eternal flowers, the honey and the flame

I am the shadow who brings light to the day
The breathless watcher
The anchor in the sea of time
The moving finger who writes the day
The background, the contrast, the negative who lets the picture fly
The giver of dirt, the worshiper
The rootless eye that passes over the land
Like a face upon the water
The lover of the light, the freedom of the wing

The hummingbird
Knows what time is flown
To turn her green breast
To the flowers of the sun

 

 
 
On the Sidewalk at Wollaston Beach


On the sidewalk at Wollaston Beach
people line the seawall taking photos of the moon
We take photos only with our mind,
but we were there first
We are there in the hour before dark
When children, tiny, on tiny bikes
race to the crosswalk of Shoreline Drive
that fury of impatient motors and wait
though the sign says 'walk' they cannot read
too small, but their caretaker, mother maybe, maybe not,
an Asian woman some thirty yards behind
who has reached the age of not hurrying
but for whom reading signs is a snap
Calls out to them, as the boy seeks her permission
saying words we cannot understand,
but one sound very much like 'go'
'Go?' he shouts
'Go!'
The girl, younger than the boy,
seizes in the frightened glee of anticipation,
her features quivering
the wonderful horror of racing across a sea of giant
hurtling machines, though of course now they are paused
waiting for the 'walk' to disappear,
like a moon behind a cloud
'Go?' she echoes, the interrogatory tone already encrypted
in her immature speech, astonished at the unsuspected gift
of so much dangerous freedom
The boy has shot in front of her, already crossed his Rubicon
The woman, still too far away, repeats her advisory, 'Go! Go!'
only now she must be hesitant  lest the girl
wait too long  and launch her pink wheel into danger
But she throws herself with a song, more than a squeal,
an ecstasy of embrace, of doing what her leader has done,
He is older, so that is enough
shoots across the rapid snare of danger, a blur of realized potential
triumphant for that entire instant, until the next one intervenes
And the woman waits at the crosswalk,
no longer 'walk' but 'wait'
as the children disappear// 
into//
the future

None of these three notices us
Nor, later, when couples saunter
in that imitation of oblivion
that comes because a new world shimmers beside you
and some idiot teens abandon the
girls who hang in waiting on the wall, groping
for some future knowing not yet intelligible to any of them
a language they cannot yet read,
in order (they announce, guilelessly, stupidly) to look at 'a picture of that girl'
But they are not going anywhere, that is to say
Well, not tonight

Tiny bikes, things that roll,
the parade of ceaseless machines we cannot// completely//  ignore
the sidewalk is ours, and everyone's
the small yippy dogs, slower folk lounging
over bags of fried seafood-smell acquired after the epic wait
at Tony's Seafood
Small groups of women
gathering, waiting on, groups of children
of many ranged and ill-sorted ages
in bathing suits, towels, shorts and tees
the boy who throws gray sand at the back
of a brother old enough to ignore him
Until we get to the space/time
where the sun has disappeared
The darkness rising from the place where
it sleeps all day, but slowly
you can miss it, dazed by the staring at lights
that must be airplanes or tease us
out of probability, space ships, hallucinations
Until the moon
which has been there all along
darkens to a sphinx-like smile
'who am I? where have I been?'
Knowing those below have been turning to meet him, turning
to arrive where he has always been
Infinitely//  now

 



My Little Girl Dreams


My little girl is far away
Her milestone date, or millstone-around-the-neck date,  pushed back into
that Narnian cupboard of inner space
From which, emerging like all forgotten things,
Pencil-faint scorecards from Fenway Park, tiny pink combs for dressing the tresses of My Pretty Pony,
Lots of garlands, and sparkle, and elfy strings,
Come dreams

In my dreams I discover the little girl,
Not mine, anyone’s, it’s a dream so I can’t remember whose I think she is,
Has been pushed aside by events
Or misunderheard so the game she had in mind
has not yet been played, though the readiness is all
I will play it
I make myself small, and listen
Now there are two of us
I will do what you want to do
If this is your dream, not mine
And even if it is mine, the same thing goes
We will go to the sandbox, or the swimming beach, or the flower garden
where you climb inside the tree circle surrounded by stella d’oro and speedwell and coral bells and Echinacea and Pink Chablis Sedum
And plant Impatiens
I am not certain, really, whether there are flowers in my dreams
But there are surely little girls

(Will no one bring Pink Chablis to her party?)

Meanwhile, back in Beirut,
she transforms her kitchen into a fragrant, splatter-prone workshop for making black bean burritos for her party,
rolling the tortillas in tomato sauce (is that possible?).
They hold together in the baking pan
like the world’s first creatures, in love with themselves
She makes guacamole and salsa
People come
They bring beer
They bring a huge exotic flowering plant
She answers the ring of the bell to find a giant lemon tree filling the doorway, the secret givers like Adam and Eve lingering behind a fruit tree,
swinging like mythical forebears from the branches
The guests make a salad
They bring seven bottles of still unopened white wine

In my dream I am there
Drinking the wine (or the wind) and telling outrageous stories,
Lies mostly,
Something like this: 
In my dream I dance barefoot on your table, stepping gracefully around the laptop
To prove to you that it doesn’t matter, really,
Nothing does,
Except swimming lessons, bike rides, jumping the ocean waves,
Sucked out of our depth by the riptide and emerging.
Wiser but still game,
Oh, two or three decades later

And in yours the Australian woman,
Eyes blazing with antipodal effrontery,
Forces her way into your world’s dirtiest kitchen,
Still gory from the black bean burrito wars,
To bake a cake from eggs and flowers and milestone ambience

And when the cake is ready your friends sing “Happy Birthday!”
Just like all the ordinary birthdays

Ah, you say, but that really happened

So did my dreams