What I Assume

Anthropomorphizing Spring

Laid lazy across the horizon two mountain ranges form feuding families,
a mix of soft curves and angles, both are draped with snow white stoals
two jutting peaks, warrior guardians to the rift between them,
a canyon tomb of their clans.

Beneath an unbending, single-minded cloud, who spreads it's eagle wings and shades
grow gray rows of outcast trees, starved branches eerily ashamed of their budding greens
and the baptism their roots shared with the grass in the winter run-off.

While the trees meditate in the cold spring wind the grass just bristles;
as it's million precocious leaves wait to begin cheerleading for the tulips
youth misled by perennial beauty, by the winter run-off,
rushing towards the dry, interminable summer,
or, of their own accord, misleading.

Some Things Organic, Some Mechanic

Autumn leaves in Springtime, mashed or matted,
dried and pallid through the frozen months
remind me of my son:

Five-years-old in October and falling
into lumpy leaf piles, reaching at the aura of magic they still retain,
the budded green from which they grew,
the way they whisked about in the winds of summer,
shaded his eyes in hot july, and tangled with a flying toy.

Wars in space come easy, as future racing cars, and dragon fantasies.
but he would not guess why the plane his great-uncle flew crashed,
assumed it was shot down, or sabatoged,
mixed up my description of a DC-2
with a photo of a lithe little Curtis Hawk,
who’s wings he imitated in a dive.
He popped his cheeks, a parachute blooming orange in the sunset
before shuddering to a safe, if sudden, landing behind enemy lines
He expected the brave pilot, in black and white, buried his silky friend
before making a quick escape beneath the same starry black sheet
that now and then peeks in from his bedroom window.

Like leaves that fall in the night, unseen, he could not yet know
sixty years ago in Sainte-Mère-Église
hundreds of the same tiny parachutes cascaded down
and if the anchors that weighed evaded the flames of foreign buildings
burnt to light the night,
if alive upon landing fell victim to NAZI machine guns.

For him it is all soft pillow,
a story good or bad, to ease the anxious stillness between lights off
and pushing away thick blankets to feel freely a radiant morning
until, for the first time, morning pushes back
and cotton to time is spun.

Walking

A human has two opposable thumbs,
is compelled by lightning and rainclouds that storm upon his brains
as on the plains on Venus.
With these man makes endless imitations.

His two legs that walk or run him
like a bicycle's wheels
are easily mis-balanced when slowed
If he steps toe to heel, if lungs dilate
he'll fear falling over
if he adjusts his pace, the placement of weight
mind and body bend to be a tuned kaironmeter
the tunnels in his head, a breathing triad:
in, out, stop
each phase qualified equal.

Then may he finally see the brown dirt path,
with weeds thereby dusted,
green stems arrayed upwards,
gray bark with blackened cracks
from a burn a dozen summers ago,
finally see the first bud, smooth like plasticine,
a new leaf, all things observable,
as Man, once again, becomes a mirror
containing everything and nothing.

So may he shrink, the dilatory respirate
until breathing, time, and nature again gain
touch, taste, smell, form; recede to the original.
Or else are released and forgotten
in favor of the easy imitations that we can control.