Showing all posts by ronhenry

All day at the desk by the big sliding glass doors while
the contagious world gradually greens, shifts of
flowers rise and fall in the breeze. Safety-yellow daffodils
bow out to a cluster of tulips, bulbs squirrels planted
and forgot and which surprised us when they emerged.
The longer we’re in here out here, the more I feel in touch
with the birds and rabbits, chipmunks and juncos, than
I feel with those I once shared work space with.
Casual conversation with acquaintances seems like
a strange dream now, a lost skill. Out here, the drama
of bug-hunting robins and grackles matters more.
Deep within red tulips, a dark six-sided sanctum sanctorum
is rimed in yellow, dusty stamens waiting for carpenter bees
to take back to the homes they would burrow into our home.

Imagine my surprise when we get a clear night and I see
the moon’s already back around, rising through
the late evening again and later draping bright lines
across bedroom rug, halfway up one wall. Imagine
my surprise catching myself almost-tripping through
patterns of light and dark as if they were solid, or semi-,
as if they created an entirely different topology
through the familiar room. The dining room becomes
a maze of long bright trapezoids, kitchen a single passage
of light through the void. After a while I am a creature
crawling the ocean floor, an insect with eyes so different
that sight’s not sight. Imagine seeking out walls with fingertips
and rug boundaries with toes and soles. Day seems like
some damn-fool dream of easy space, and impossible.

Early morning bright half-moon backing into
the gap between Jupiter and Saturn.
Everything bright or dark, everything
etched by stark contrast.
The waning moon faces backwards and I expect
more gray and yellow in the night.
Waking and waiting to go back to sleep, instead
take a half-blind turn around the house.

Moonlight pours from south-facing windows,
drapes trapezoids of colorless light, reshapes
random furniture, walls, countertops, appliances.
Constellations of electronics status lights cluster
from shelves and desks. Cold navigational signs
that pepper the night, that I barely know how to read.