is more fun than Easter,
for me.
I teach at
a Quaker school
and today was warm
and sunny
and perfect
for hiding easter eggs
in the long grass
and behind the benches
in the courtyard
outside the meeting house
where we go for Friday
morning meetings.
This Thursday
was the last day
before spring break
and we met
in the gym, instead.
I finished hiding the eggs
while I sweated
under the sun
on an 82 degree
late morning
in early April.
I was happy
in not taking
a single egg
for myself.
I hid a dozen
in the empty fountain,
two and three
tucked in little corners
of shade and sun,
and I tried to cover
the colorful ones
in the long, growing
grass.
Watching four
and five-year-olds
search desperately
and competitively
for eggs,
filled my heart
with gold, today.
One boy, a smart boy
didn't look for eggs.
He was too busy
finding dandelions
and pointing out
fire berries.
That boy
made my heart sing
today.
through a dreamhole i saw a hybrid of scorpion and human and he shot me with his arrow and with his hook pulled me out of the meeting house just to eat me raw and spit out my mercury
i once chanted bloody mary in the mirror three times trying to die but then a cocktail drink appeared in my hand
from what i've learned growing up, satan knows all our names and has made a good effort to pronounce mine 'cause i can hear it when i sleep, clearer than the day i'm missing
i've learned to shoot wishing stars and tongue my bites and take medicine of my own taste and
i've learned that saltwater is thicker than blood and i'm closer to the ocean floor than to the sky i’m fed everyday
i followed a trail of pine needles in Bali and locked myself in a fantasy
i spit my teeth out into grit and then
i wake up gritting my teeth, each one paid for with coins and hexed by a fairy
sometimes things that seem hidden are just as easy as ABC
just act natural, just act natural
Why make a sound or noise
or do anything to the page?
Unison playing from polyphony,
music evolves toward simplicity.
Gould's assertion that complexity,
NASA, is no more certain than a drunk in his city
weaving, heaving his guts into the gutter;
by any measure, evolution's favored bacteria.
Therefore, the earliest poem taking joy
in abundant crops and the lover's body,
2K B.C., followed by Yeats' Lapis Lazuli
offers the completest hope to us, easily,
for living this life without God's help
or even probability's. We meet
in the meeting house, argue and pray. We sit
with the dead who gave their genes to whelp
ourselves. Today, and then, the one question is
What is the polity's interest in the private soul?
Being free means belonging to the loved ones.
O the individual, alone, cannot be whole.
Governance evolves to democracy,
man accepting sole responsibility
for his thoughts, his wants, his words. Pure,
vibratoless song from a polyphony of wars.
friends meeting house
yellowing pages show tithes
from decades ago
swarm of bees in the springhouse
cluster around a new post
friends meeting house
a swarm of bees
in the spring house
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