Japanese Beetles aren't too bad this year, but all the same...

Japanese Beetles


In this light, my spirit was through all things and into all creatures, and I recognized God in grass and plants.
-Jacob Boehme


Varieties of green on the trees outside the window:
on the sun-side, iridescent, lime green
on the shade side, dark green.
at the top, just a few leaves responding to the
attentions of the light wind
with a coy tilt of their hands.

Look out three dimensions into
a tunnel of trees,
a grassy floor,
mottled lime and lizard green
in the sun’s fickle focus.

Japanese Beetles charge.
Sex crazed from the pungent scent,
they crash into me , away from the dahlias,
on their way to the lure
and sure death by suffocation.

Crusted on a peach pink peace rose,
like two dozen shiny green-brown jewels,
vampires of the summer,
cannibals of the flower flesh.

Into the bag they go,
unable or unwilling to fly back out,
fester among themselves
like a stampeding crowd
in the fire filled nightclub.

I see God in the trees, in the vulnerable roses.
I see God in the Japanese Beetles
whom I lure and trap,
but who keep coming at me
in unwelcome droves.

some recent poems

Saliva

Even the birds have tongues.
I've seen hummingbird's, fine as a hair,
slip out to catch the nectar from the fuchsia,
have seen fledgling woodpecker's tentatively taste
sweetness
from the birdbell at my window.
Tongues sliding on saliva.

Healing water from our mouths,
healing water all were born with ,
salvia salvation, living water,
humble, intimate, vibrant, vital.

Tomcat licking his wounds after a fight,
my mother licking her finger, rubbing the dirt off my nose...
Saliva, shining my lips and teeth,
cleaning my glasses, sucking my cut finger,
Christ's saliva on the blind man's eyes.

More humble than tears,
how did you come to be flung out
of the mouth of scorn?






(published in the March 15,2008 issue of Commonweal)







Pulling up the Vines

Five entwined:
Wild grape ,aristocratic leaves and tiny purple berries,
English ivy, dignified and sturdy,
Creeping clematis, profuse and pungent white flowers,
Honeysuckle, seductive, heavy, waxy yellow flowers,
and Poison Ivy, those shiny red then green glossies.
Gloved , armed with clippers, I tear them from the smothered juniper.
Snarling, I charge them as I wrench them:
Get off the azaleas!
Bouncy and fragrant with galloping photosynthesis,
they pull away in long loops.
Aggressive, rejected,
they wilt slowly,
piled in a mountain by the trash can.