Toward the Empress Card (2 more poems)

    Nature

The giver that gives till there is none to give

She gently reminds us to conserve.

The trees and brooks towering peaks and seas

Are ornaments for beds of ore, pools of grease.

Tumbling and rumbling as if furiously,

He stays solid beneath my home.

Tearing and breaking and always remaking

The undulation of my soul.

Nature is fat, nature is rich, nature is cruel,

The commodities of nature, the conservation of nature,

The ambiguities of nature and the nature

Upon which I sit, which is not nature but

The poetry of Mr. Olmsted. But poetry

Too is of nature inspired and of nature made.

The law of supply and demand

And the law of conservation of matter and energy

Are corrupted by the animal spirit. She laughs,

He mocks and scorns us pointing laughing,

They shake the heaven in ridicule, chastising,

Haranguing, hoping that one day we’d understand

That there never was ill will nor malicious intent.

That is to say, our vengeance is quite pointless.

    Summer

Summer is the time when poets meet.
Teenagers and middle-agers alike elope
To distant deserts and deserted warehouses;
To faraway star systems and sylvan glens-
Where feet speak better than lips do and
Lips work harder than hands can and hands
Mold faster than a brain can move and
Brains play for no reason other than that they do.

Summer cries for winter’s wither that
Only in the spring was noticed. Spring tried
To unyoke the tired past and rekindle the still
Damp heart. Summer is the time for adventures
And wild picnics, larger the better. For when
Autumn’s cool breeze penetrates your skivvies,
It is time to decide with what or whom to nest.