Popular Poppies

A dozen breadseed poppies

blossoms pink and lavender

amid the blue green foliage and 

bumpy round unripe seedpods.

At the center of each blossom 

a fat chartreuse button

wears an Elizabethan ruff of 

creamy stamens buzzing

with two or three, or even four, 

golden honey bees per flower.

View from the Hammock

Clouds of elderberry blossoms,

creamy sun splashed tops

lemony shadowed undersides,

against bright cerulean sky.

Khon

Orange day lilies arc 

like traditional Thai dancers

before purple robed petunia courtiers.

Plan Bee

“Oh!  There is a bumblebee on the floor!”

She slides it onto a plastic gift card,

and covers it with a juice glass.

Six legs wave weakly in the air,

she tips the glass, tumbles the bee upright,

it lists sideways, a foreleg raised wardingly

and buzzes feebly, one wing barely moving.

“I wonder if the cats got it.

Should I just put it out of it’s misery?”

“Can you?   I couldn’t.”

“I’ll just take it outside.”

“Wait.”  I squeeze out a glob of honey. 

The bee is oblivious with exhaustion.

She maneuvers it to face the amber bump - 

a long proboscis lunges into the sweetness, 

frantically pumps up the ready nourishment.

We gather round exclaiming, peering, 

running for magnifiers (which don’t help much)

and then she takes the bee in it’s prison

to the picnic table and sets the glass aside.

An hour later, there is only the sticky card.

The Other Side of the Fence

The white blanket appaloosa stallion

stands at the fence nearest the green pasture

where the mares and foals graze amid daisies.

His head droops, tail swishes periodically,

eventually he turns and plods to the far 

corner of the trammeled bare corral. 

Cool Summer Greenhouse

A mossy archipelago is emerging

on the sepia sea of dirt floor

islands of bright apple green bounded

along their fjorded coastlines

by graduations of olive and marine.

Eggsperimenting

Teaching the ten year old 

to separate eggs 

we decided to experiment with 

the spaghetti server.

It is a failure - 

the yolk is safely cupped 

while the glistening white 

hangs grotesquely from the holes 

and metal fingers but 

never lets go -

he fizzes with laughter, 

“It looks so cool!”

Honey Hero

The plastic bear is up to his neck again 

in dark amber sweet viscosity.

He wears his pointed blue cap smartly

but hunches noticeably to the left

his right shoulder and ear lobe gone

lost in a microwave incident,

and he leans unnaturally far forward 

his feet shrunken toward his belly

from simmering angled in hot water,

honorable scars received in the line of duty

in the War on Crystallization.

Carcass of a fallen rose

shriveled, trodden

stains decking pink.

Ripping out pigweed, johnny-jump-up, dandelion,

spiders and beetles scurry every direction -
this is their rainforest I’m devastating.

Hawk repeatedly shrieking 

like a boy with a new whistle.

Cooling ginger tea tingles 

along the side edges, 

on the bottom tip of my tongue.

Midnight on the Porch

Among the purring shadows

two tiny dark spots waddle - 

Apples has brought her kittens! 

Another Rescue

All night the rain pattered whispering,

weighting the foliage like snowfall

flattening tall grasses in herringbone 

bending lilac boughs to kiss the ground.

Young son ventures through the drops half-clad

to save the towering foxgloves spires

gently shaking each precious stalk

releasing a fresh and horizontal shower.

Summer Rain

Air ion fragrant, garden laden, forest kissed

cool-warm drops blessing face, hands, bare toes.

Hallelujah for the pillow and book on the swing

that the leaf pattering dared me to rescue!

Ladybird Mystery

Translucent amber dotted in black

the convex teardrop carapace 

lies abandoned on cool tile.

Stooping to Pull Weeds

Bright yellow spider

abseils off my hat brim 

onto the ferny cosmos.

Oak Table Still Life

Broad daisies and airy buttercups

carried up from the creekside pasture,

their stems thrust into a canning jar,

nod above a yellow soup plate

mounded with bright red cherries.

Creekside #2

Whirring to a sunlit sandbar alder

cedar waxwing flashes a short square tail 

tipped in brilliant Super Cub yellow.

Creekside

Green-veiled, the afternoon sun 

shines through aspen crowns,

a harried cedar waxwing

provisions a pair of gibbering

fluttering fledglings in silhouette.

Flashback

A powerplant’s song drops a tone, 

overhead I spot the single engine plane -

for a moment I feel my palm, last three fingers 

and thumb wrapped around the throttle knob

index finger pointing along the shaft

finger tip braced against the panel

to calibrate the adjustment,

easing the power out just a tad,

the vibration of engine and prop

all around and through me.

Breakfast culminates in 

the alpine strawberry bed

a handful of sun warmed rubies 

bursting sweet tart 

between tongue and roof of mouth.

Curled on the garden swing

under the pear and elderberry

absorbed in the third volume -

the leaf teasing breeze

sounds like pages flipping.

Small Talk

At the top of a silvered utility pole

riddled with woodpecker holes

and vertical splits is a foot long stick

bolted upright to the side and

crowned by a brown ceramic insulator.

A third of the way down the pole

two red-capped downy woodpeckers

“kerChup, kerChup, kerChup!” at each other

Are they quarreling?  Trading gossip?

Or like us are they proclaiming 

“I’m alive!  So are you!”

Kerscritch, a page turns.

Shrunch... shhloouuurp!

Ten year old, garden swing,

fruitsicle, Garfield book.

Choosing Earrings

Pure shining silver cones 

hung from curves of silver wire

long slender plumb-bobs

resonating carpentry, cartography, 

compass roses, sundial rays 

straightforwardness, true purpose

and the golden age of flight.