Bird of Paradise
—Poems by Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento, CA
—Anonymous Photos
SUMMER BIRDS OF PARADISE
In my yard beneath blue skies
where you’ll find yellow butterflies
grow several Birds of Paradise.
A scene of beauty such that brings
elusive black bugs out to sing,
to see these birds with browning wings
and golden beaks, and crowns of brass
that look like hair or tawny grass,
by brick-lined path where I walk past.
I now step down a brick-lined stair
to sit beside these birds. Austere,
they stand as portrait—still as air.
Sunflowers
SUNFLOWER
"Sunflower strove with hollyhock.”
from “First Death” by Donald Justice
Sunflower-maize and pink-on-stalk
two plants rising toward the sun—
a sunflower strives with hollyhock.
Past noonday hour at one o’clock
no birds sang—no, not a one.
Sunflower-maize and pink-on-stalk
aglow in sunny noonday shock
compete where streams of silver run.
The sunflower strives with hollyhock
in grasses neatly cleared of rock
where other strivings now are done.
Sunflower-maize and pink-on-stalk
both dressed in nature’s modest frock
don’t seem to know, they’ve both won;
the sunflower strives with hollyhock.
So wide it grows in front to block
the sun—grace it hopes to be undone.
Sunflower-maize blocks pink-on-stalk.
The sunflower strives with hollyhock.
Hollyhock
THINK OF ME IN SUMMER
I think about you on your summer lake
in your father’s old green boat rowing—
forming diamond wakes
rippling rather, farther out—as you and I
have seemed to do.
A love-concern made fresh
in summer’s dew found early on in lakes
at dawn, as we two think of us anew.
______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
In the garden of gentle sanity
May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.
—Chögyam Trungpa
______________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Carol Louise Moon for this morning’s sunshine and hollyhocks! Carol Louise will read this afternoon in Placerville with Sue Daly (plus open mic), 1-3pm at Love Birds Coffee and Tea Co., 1390 Broadway. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.
Carol Louise Moon
Think of me in summer…—and celebrate poetry!
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