October 2017
I am a poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. When I am not writing, composing, or diagnosing, I love paddling out on my kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near my home in California. My first book of poetry and photography “a clear day in october” (http://www.egjpress.org/products/a-clear-day-in-october ) was published in 2016 by E&GJ Press. A chapbook is forthcoming from Praxis Magazine later this year.
antiques
young
green
soaked in anticipation
wood bends easily
under careful hands
rockers and arms
arched and curved
to receive
to comfort
time
blind enemy
left this old chair brittle
demanding that others who sit
conform to its patterns
etched into the grain
match their rhythm
to the limits
of the worn rockers
but we have come to fit each other
touch
weight
and energy
the distance of the tilt
measured by the push
of familiar feet
years of knowing
how far to rock
when not to press for more
Author’s note. So much talk of mental illness in humans. It made me wonder, what would happen if one of nature’s other critters had a mental illness. Like honeybees, for example.
bipolar bees
from the heart of the hive
comes a maniacal hum
rising in pitch until
bees explode out the entrance
and entranced set out
in at least two directions
they buzz over begonias
that are breathtakingly depressing
and dahlias that are stunningly lethargic
chrysanthemums exultantly wilt
into melancholic mounds
bees flit, sit, drone, and droop
their ecstatic bags of petulant pollen
swelling in silent sorrow
until they finally make their way hiveward
where they waggle in enthusiastic boredom
gate and garden
to anyone casually curious
i am a gate
weathered brown and gray on rusted hinges
neither shouting nor whispering my age
only revealing the years
of wind and sun and rain
in woodgrain patterns
that run me top to bottom
to those determined to know me
i am garden behind gate
morning glory pinks and purples
four o'clocks
nodding small red bonnets
above black seeds that drop
like words on an empty page
hollyhocks and sweet peas
mixed with spider mums
feathered carnations
blushing pink on white
over some little praise
or embarrassed for brushing against
roses that overrun their trellis
across the brown bricks
and patches of yellowing grass
where the shade of a flowering crab-apple tree
never reaches in late afternoon
the lord of the garden
proudly displays black currant pearls
scattered profusely across a deep green cape
beware tiny darts
hidden in the lining
to guard his closest secrets
from careless hands
© 2017 j.lewis
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