about the way (sun) light falls through things

apologizing to the tomato starts
for potting them up
into cold soil

_______

whirlygig on top of the whitehouse
while yellow trash bags go airborne
over the gravel road
(emory cheering on the kite
that tyler apprehends with
his garden hoe)

_______

wire brush with a neon-orange handle
held tight in my hand while
scraping today’s dirt (rich and sandy)
from work-party (building north garden)
shovels (for path-digging)
hoes (for furrow-making and covering)
pitchforks (for pummy-pitching)

_______
i drink from the fountain of youth i say
with an eyebrow raised (ridiculous face)
in a ridiculous voice
upon discussing my actual (38) age and
perceived (31) age

_______

two cups of peanuts
two tablespoons of butter
two tablespoons honey
they’re easy to make
says mica
about the honey roasted peanuts she served on
tonights beautiful (shredded carrots, sprouts, shredded beets) gado gado

_______

8-cup pyrex on the butcher bock
filled with darien’s roasted dandelion
(collected and processed this spring) tea
sweetened with sorghum and
softened with milk

_______

you should have a bumper sticker i say
to darien
that says
ask me about black walnuts

_______

it’s always about the way the (sun)light
falls through things and
this evening, it’s about the way
the pinkblue sky (light)
falls through budding branches
of arc-limbed trees
whose name i don’t know
outside the long loft window

_______

white pine sap (and sap smell)
picked up by the palms of my hands,
the denim of my pants
on a sunset climb
holding on (hugging)
25-30 feet up
in the wind
(the specific sound it makes
whishing through the needles
as we bend / sway )

_______

from the water world:

Maritime police search for missing passengers in front of the South Korean ferry “Sewol” which sank at the sea off Jindo.  – voice of america, day in photos

A relative waits for their missing loved one at a port in Jindo, South Korea. – voice of america, day in photos

People enjoy the last day of water festival on Pyi Road in Rangoon, Burma. - voice of america, day in photos

 

when the redness rusts

(less today and more last night
but perhaps most likely sometime in between) :
the first umbra
moves in across the moon (full)
while i warm at the stove in the greenhouse
and step out, every 10 or 15 minutes or so
to see the moon/sky change
how the energy around me changes
as the light fades
once the redness rusts (2:30ish a.m.)
i retreat to sleep
(bloodmoon on a 23 degree night)
how a big part of the magic
was not the moon at all
but the spray of stars revealed
in its veiling

_______

clipping cotyledons
off the singed brassica starts
in the greenhouse
(still stovewarmed at 9am)
with red-handled scissors

_______

jesse holds acetate stencil
(fox-shaped)
up to greenhouse wall
while i sponge on
the red clay/mud
_______

a name for the delight of
an end-of-the-liner
finding there are still chai-spiced mini cupcakes
and mexican hot chocolate cookies
awaiting in the potluck kitchen

_______

mica on upstairs karma couch
as tyler starts asking about missouri
says something like
is it political? i don’t know anything about politics
which may be true in some ways
but is mostly hilarious because of
the untrueness of it
and then, more hilarity
when she says
(as if to say more, but gets cut off here)
i read part of a book once…
and maybe none of this even translates
but the laughter that unfolded
is what it’s about

_______

the crackle of fire
in the stove along with
the glub-bubbling
carboy in the closet
tyler’s latest
brewing for sandhill’s 40th anniversary/mayday

_______

we sing-yell
baaa bahh black sheep
have you any wool
with emory
in the toyota truckbed
cruising south on highway M
under a blushing sky
_______

from the water world:

An Iraqi boy jumps off the back of a buffalo into the water in the city of Najaf
Picture: HAIDAR HAMDANI/AFP/Getty Images – telegraph

Michigan rivers are over their banks after three days of storms dropped as much of 5.5 inches of rain, forcing some flood plain residents from their homes. This man evacuated on April 14 after the waters flooded his home.
Photo: AP – the hindu

 

with pitchforks and muscle

snow swirling on chilled morning air
the sound it makes against:
puffy green vest
corrugated plastic priv roof
green grass and old dead leaves
the white of it seen from
edges of my vision as it lands
on cheeks and lashes

in the midst of all this,
another white: blooms on three of the orchard trees

_______

after-lunch chocolate chip offering
from the smallest of nesting ramikens

_______

i make some stupid joke
about freezing mid-stried
while road crossing
and then freeze-pose it for a pause

_______

granola’s nose scab
(where the vet sliced her open
to see whether the growth was
more like an abcess [drainable]
or more like cancerous)
found on her chair of residence
and dropped into the tray of
flower-starts on the window ledge

______

in snowpants (trish)
and a windproof layer (darien)
all of us wearing gloves
not because of the rugged work ahead
but because of the dropping temperature
as the day moves through itself

_______

the rhythm of lifting the breaking-down tangles
of last fall’s sorghum stalks
with pitchforks and muscle
into the garden cart
and lifting/dumping them out again
as we pummie paths
so, this just turns into soil i ask
about what happens between now and
next spring

_______

i don’t know anything about writing trish says
surrounded by pages of her zine
in mid-layout

_______

emory opens a chocolate chip store
on the couch
where i buy one chip from his handful
with one chip from mine

______

how the shape of moonlight (full)
turns into a band
when seen through corrugated plastic
(as in: while lighting a fire
in the greenhouse
on this mid-april night that’s
suppoed to get down to 23 degrees)

_______

9:05pm
whitehouse kitchen fills with banana bread baking smell and
the sound of two tickings and one rattle
(fast tick: plastic hamburger-shaped timer on table
slow tick: round black-framed white-face clock above sink
rattle: small fridge tucked in between
the cast-irons wall and the dishracks,
metal-on-metal kind of sound

_______

from the water world:

Water is sprayed on revelers during the traditional new year water festival in Rangoon, Burma. Burma began celebrating Thingyan on Sunday, marking the New Year according to the traditional Burmese Lunisolar calendar.  – voice of america, day in photos

Thousands of wildebeest battle against each other to cross Kenya’s Mara River. Just north of the border with Tanzania, the animals are part of the largest animal movement in the 21st century – known as the Great Migration. Picture: Karen Lunney/Solent News – telegraph

under morning thunder

under morning thunder
mica unfurls the quilt
left unfinished by her grandma
_______

treasure-hunting we call it
tromping through rainwet (and glass-lined) woods
of what was once
a landfill
finds include:
poison (algae water in what i presume to be a ketchup bottle)
a blue pint ball jar, unbroken
a rubber ball (for hank)
another bottle i presume to be something ketchupish (a great vase, i say)
slices of wood slabs rich red and blond and dark rings
later identified by darien as locust

_______

emory perched
in a recently pruned apple tree
at the edge of the pond says
from tree-top
this is a good lookout

_______

two applewood branches
in a zip loc bag
to keep them green and easier
to carve

_______

how mica holds granola’s head
and she, post-lunch and sleepy
complies
a few quick snips through scab crust
to remove white tied stitches
from the incision above her nose

_______

jesse enters the kitchen
with a gathering of wild edibles
in a silver bowl

_______

in william’s handwriting
the dosa recipe
at my side as i ladle
the fermented rice/lentils
into skillets on the stove
attempting to perfect my crepe-thinning ladle-side/bottom technique
while the smell of banana bread
(a box browning brought in by st. lousians)
rises from oven

_______

a sting like cartoon stars
that swells my finger
tyler smooshes (crunch) the black wasp under his shoe
on the plastic bag on the kitchen floor

left the tracks singing

the best part of dog and gun
i report back
was finding the tent that was kindof like a library, it was so quiet,
and spending a half hour, maybe 45 minutes
looking at every single postcard
in the box of postcards

_______

first shorts-wearing day of the year
soil sneaking in between foot and sandal
in the field named look farther
_______

like pearls
shining in the furrows
potatoes placed
skin-side up

_______

black gold announces trish
texas t!
shaking shovelfuls of horse manure
over the potatoes before we
fill the furrows back in

_______

shirts twisted around the line
(evidence of today’s perfect laundry weather,
sunny/hot and windy)
as i unclip them

_______

the brutal uprooting
of tomato seedlings
in the name of giving them
a bigger home
(dangled down into the broadened/deepened centerhole
in the soilblocks)

_______

will you (do the honors) mica asks
a tube of aloe gel in her hand and
her shoulders/upper back pink and radiating heat

_______

what do you mean when you say that was a good one
sarah sun asks about the particular train that
just passed and left the tracks singing beneath us
i mean it was fast
and loud
_______

moon halo
hanging over us
on the train bridge
(the moon itself
smudged by gray)
_______

this just in from the water world:

Filipino instructors teach participants how to swim like mermaid during the ‘Mermaid Swim Experience’ at Manila Ocean Park, Manila, the Philippines. The 45 minute experience features basic swimming instruction, how to glide with fish tail underwater and breathing techniques so participants can fufill their dreams of being mermaids. Picture: RITCHIE B. TONGO/EPA – telegraph

laying down coins and cards

how a highway pickup with lulu
is almost like being back in ecuador
gathering trash, we laugh
about the telltale crackle
of plastic underfoot
(concealed by layers of matted grass)
we study the latest in energy drinks (xyience)
and we jokingly deride our fellow pickuppers
for missing so much as we double back
_______

mica, stephen, emory, robin, tyler, trish and i
walk the streets of rutledge
taking up the span of pavement
a band photo
to get to zims
for pre-lunch ice cream (no matter which size
cone you order, tyler says, they always give you
the same amount)

_______

the rhythm of potato planting:
first, the furrows
dug with a thinner version of a grub hoe
(a furrowing hoe)
then potatoes (sliced –
each piece adorned with at least one eye)
placed skin-side up,
10 inches apart
one of us goes through
with a wheelbarrow
scooping out several shakes of manure
on top of each potato
and one of us comes through
with a hoe
(or just our hands)
to seal the furrow back up
_______

is that enough ghee joe asks
standing back at the butcher block
a big silver bowl of popcorn
in his hands

_______

poporopo!!!!!
spanish tells us the word for popcorn he picked up in south america
and we cannot help but exclaim
stan, gigi, joe, trish and i while
laying down coins and cards
in spanish

_______

though lulu and i
have told the dogs-of-quilatoa story
multiple times before
tonight is the first time
we tell it in spanish
_______

a night i never want to come in from
meaning: it’s nice enough to sit on the
screened-in porch without being cold
the peepers singing their rise-fall chorus
the moon coating grass, the road, tree limbs
in light

the history it was built on

balmy is the word
we wake to
(last night’s cloud
cover insulating this
morning’s air to 50 degrees)
and the day that follows
remains blanketed
in insulation
(cloud cover
but enough light streaming through
that it is never a dreary gray)
warm enough to be
sleeveless in the garden

_______

the birds in the morning
they’re just so joyful
i want some of that joy
stan says
yeah, hook me up
says tyler

_______

trish talks with tears in her eyes
about two things:1. the treehouse
in the cottonwood forest
that was once
the pruitt igoe projects
not only the treehouse
but the history it was built on and
the dreaming that went into building it
2.  holding a
two-thousand year old pipe
(made of stone, shaped like a bird)
to her mouth
at the st. louis lakota sweat

_______

from 1:30 – 6 pm
it’s me and the digging fork in
east garden, bed #2
[future site of cosmos, painted tongue, bachelor's buttons, marigolds, yarrow]
easing out the dead nettle [which is never dead,
which in fact was green and growing
even in the single digit days of winter] and dandelion
and breaking up the waking soil
for planting into
plus path-digging
and path-mulching
the bone and muscle satisfaction
of working this process
from beginning to end

_______

for every two you see
you can take one
i tell emory
regarding the worms
in east garden bed #2
which he makes a home for
with dirt in a plastic tub

_______

the flinch-face i make
is more for entertainment purposes
than acutal flinching
when trish puts her hand
near my heart
(which is four layers under:
puffy vest, sweater, thin long underwear, sleeveless tshirt)

we strategize over
joe’s hashbrowns and
a bar of chocolate with
hazelnuts and berries

_______

darien delivers
one stick of frankincense
and one stick of tibetan incense
in exchange for one stick of japanese incense
and one doug fir

_______

the small but significant sacredness
of dirt on my fingers/around my nails
at the end
of the day

_______

from the water world:

Men pose for a photo from the inside of an abandoned buildings cistern in Rio, Brazil. Thousands of people have laid claim to the compound of abandoned office buildings owned by the private telecommunications company Oi, and named their settlement after the state-owned telecommunications Telerj. Picture: Silvia Izquierd – the telegraph

A tiny jumping spider no bigger than 0.39′ (1cm) long keeps still as it wanders carefully through moss while balancing a water droplet on its head. Picture: Rohani Tanasal/Solent - the telegraph

Men try to douse the flames with buckets of water as a fire caused by an electrical fault from one of the dwellings razes homes in Nairobi’s Deep Sea slum. Picture: SIMON MAINA/AFP - the telegraph