Poetry

Lake Michigan Light Lasts Longer Than an Exhale

Light lasts longer by the lake

as if the past returning

remains,

and like long breath retrievable.

I overhear a woman from Georgia

say harvest red haven peaches

retrain light;

light tarries, dozes,

to taste, to touch, but not where

she is from.

It’s the latitude, some say,

but I think it’s the dunes’

yellow sand reflecting into twilight,

scattered firs in the dune swallowed by light,

so, their branches sway and expose the mobbed light.

Or dust, microbeads, oil particles, catching water

webs of light, making light from metal flora.

Meteorologists and weather apps agree

Michigan twilight extends beyond the expected,

chattering about it as if regular news,

always naming the exact time,

of sunset, as if we were looking for more

late afternoon chores, signs of life.

I ignore my errands, watch

warm light pollinating

bearded chestnuts in my back acre,

light along with soft thistle orbs,

white waterfalls of bearded seed pods,

consider also how the tops of thistle seeds linger light,

light crowding orchards heavy with apples,

down groves where tomatoes and eggplant are stalked.

Late light pushes an almond heavy branch

burning into my front window.

I ask the woman from Georgia if she misses

an early dark; to her

light feels like a vacant lot never ending.

Doesn’t light make fruit sweeter?

Perhaps beached light made her think of

her past, of light bound low laying wetlands

more endured than loved. Light obliterated

by the time you drive to Escanaba.

Here the light makes a longer watch.

The river sugar sparking,

add the whitewashed domes from gravel collecting silos

opening more furrows for light.

I swear longer light shows snap verdicts of hawks,

blood-spattered fright. Light confusing fireflies

in the shadows with their vague claims for the moon

who thought the light nearby,

a firefly moon, we call it, yellow trout lily light.

So, I thought for a year,

demobilized of light,

the late light I no longer think about

or feel a panic of need.

Now he is gone, passed on.

South Carolina Bull Frogs, Bring it On

Bullfrogs, green frogs near the door, near the patio light where the dogs sleep.

Come out of lagoons, bayous, rice fields, chimneys were black arms furrowed pluff mud,

come out of the oyster beds before high tide numbs breath, before a peach orchard sinks,

oysters pop out air from their shells.

Bango string peepers, come off the shrimp boats, come before the tide swallows the sparrow’s eye,

Come off the slide of the cerise marsh grass, the fringe of marsh grass where salt water

Scrimmages in the tides, hiding the waders that once dug in.

I have the tide chart in my hands, come before the tide becomes chloroform, the rising depth

Stirs the pickerel frog, the spadefoot toads, come while humid night smokes peach stems,

Come while the alligator waits in the lagoon, sliding in and along roads after the hurricane’s

aftermath,

bathing in the road in front of the corner percolating café, where the baristas, strangely happy,

listen to entering voices, as if the cyclone’s rain had spoken.

I listen for banjo string peppers as they listen for me, where I sit by the fire pit not lit,

stars incised equally along the sides as if constellations never exploded like a crack in the driver’s

window,

they sing and stop, stop and then surmise what the gap may mean. Hey frogs, I recommend

a pause to listen to the selves soaking in the after-silence.

Hey, come where the foundations - not even a bowl of mud - stand. Coffin point, rightly named,

Close knit chimneys reveal the food remains in a Charleston rice field,

Come up though your bodies have forgotten flight, carrying the night sky. I get why

You hang on to crepe myrtles, hide under the grill covering, burrow under the recycle trash bin

Not yet unloaded, filled with empty shoe boxes and Styrofoam trays, empty of air, ready

to capture non-stop sound. I drive in, bull frogs, green frogs, you are louder than the food delivery

trucks the packing plants haul along M-140, gravel trucks, the staccato knock of the horn

on my Jeep Compass when the alternator died. You have turned the whole world into an orchestral pit.

And yesterday, to be fair, I found a toad by the sprinkler, small as a wisdom tooth. Not making a sound.

Encourage her, please, dear narrow mouth frogs, even you with constricted throats sing raucously.

And now, suddenly, a stillness, then the after-silence broken. Sing fixing home in your throats,

Joyful glossolalia, night fall never leaving me soundless or alone, as if the invisible spoke

But still made of water, skin, and flightless bone.

*pluff mud: plough mud composing marsh and wetlands in low country coastal areas because of its

unique scent made of decaying matter and tides

Anti-pastoral Ghazal

Tired of store-bought herbs,

I made a kitchen garden out of kitty litter trays high as my knee.

No one would ever call it ‘pastoral.’

No one who has ever planted mint would say mint is not pastoral.

I doubt if anyone would like how my herb garden is housed.

Kitty cat litter boxes are not the most appealing pastoral.

The plants are scroungy: Strawberry runners meander without finding dirt to sync.

Dill flowerheads turn to jaundice yellow without ever defining

the pastoral.

No signal from earth will ever tell the exo-planets with their gaseous colors

exploding into spirals that our container gardens, filled with heartburn geraniums,

make a pastoral.

Pasture or pastoral care? I like weeds that everyone has walked over,

like plantains, pasture flowers, that no one would think of as idyllic. Yet, she told me,

so many people walked over plantains they are considered pilgrimage flower.

No one understands the savagery of basil or coleus going to seed.

One basil becoming a color guard - of purple, of black - is this pastoral?

When it rains like a flash flood, it is worse: then the dill becomes rhinestones,

like the ones attached to cowboy boots, a country song lamenting how I confuse lovers

with flora: bee balm for chives. Pretty yellow marjoram, I swear surviving winter,

look like dilly flowerheads. Chamomile for coriander.

I cannot escape the odor of dill: It wants to be scented, like you lover, who kisses

my toes because I walked in the pastoral.

When Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus escaped Herod, they must have rested on nets placed under

olive trees, watched the gatherers knock off the olives with walking sticks. Mary must have

put some olive oil on her sore nipples, and Joseph his sore heels.

When we are tired of walking, we stare at the fullness, the chives in their driftless plain,

self-contained, and wonder if our desire for the pastoral will still be there. Oh, only a dream

where squash leaves and nightshade scrolled as cursive letters unroll out of our mouths.

Where our bones cradle thistle seed heads no longer picked in the pastoral.