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Yew trees perched up against the sky please me.
Violets, wild, shrinking and shy, please me.
Massed gloss of bluebells to come,
Nettles too young to cry please me.
Polished celandine, tumbling down
to rutted tracks, now dry, please me.
Bees, circling dead wood,
not yet ready to die please me.
Tits’ un-oiled hinge singing
to serenade me when I sigh please me.
Old Dorking’s grey roofs,
seen by climbing high, please me.
Mountain bike, nerve and verve
enough to make this Rose fly please me.
He plucked my youthful budding love when I was but a blossom
and under springtime moon and sun my heart shall ever blossom.
A seedling needs but warmth and light and gentle mist of rainfall
to stretch down sturdy, healthy roots and spring forth grateful blossoms.
The gardener's firm and tending hand pulls up the weed intruders,
ensuring space and room to grow — protection for the blossom.
A gentle wind, its springtime notes that carry scent and laughter,
does lift the sweet bud's darling head and twirls the dancing blossom.
Against the forest fringe I lie, his canopy above me
sheltering from caustic rays his prize — I, the fragile blossom.
Unlike blooms that only grow after the pruning shears have passed
I am free to vine, to shoot, to climb, and dress in daring blossoms.
Though my bed be strewn with ash and dampened earthy yesterdays
I nestle in his arms, content, and dream of ways to blossom.
Suddenly summer rain dances through fragrant air,
leap to leaf trampolines, somersaults in buoyant air.
Turtle doves take refuge, gurgling cues, under eaves,
coo-coey-coo, coo-coey-coo, flutter and flit — migrant air.
Once Farinelli sang, Ombra mai fu, at La Fenice, Venezia,
a voice without a shadow casting a spell — radiant air.
All afternoon my love and I sip wine and eavesdrop on
the waves, love-and-leave, love-and-leave — undulant air.
Unmoored, a gondola glides by the Aqua Alta flooded
street. Wanderers’ serendipity — kiss of flamboyant air.
Faraway galaxies lure with a promise of life. God of
trees, seas, beauty, and birds: Grant us water! Grant air!
Perpendicular lines delineate a grid on the map. Three-
quarters — stone dead, but in the last quadrant — air.
Don’t say: Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die;
prepare bread and wine, song and dance, tolerant air.
The desert breathes deep at sun-rise, before the sands spin
fire and the heat ripples beneath a dome of flagrant air.
Sarah laughs when she hears the gazelle’s dying cry, in
the end, resembles the sound of her song, Resonant Air.
What numbers only hold their own and one, even for me?
Except for two, all primes are odd, not even, even for me.
Long pi will never tally coin and mills for taxes due.
Unending decimation, no wonder a fraction, even for me.
What swooping plot line taxis on an algebraic axis?
An asymptote will never end its run, even for me.
To solve unknowns requires perfect balance linking variables,
one less than for which we have equations, even for me.
What series sees us grow in leaps by steps before the twelfth?
Fibonacci makes one old in eleven, even for me.
There are limits to rounding off the world’s geometries,
and calculus can take their measure in motion, even for me.
Our finite mathematics plumbs the imaginary too,
Like the same square root of minus one, even for me.
I’ll drink from the pool it floats in, but not from the bottle of Klein,
that happy hour after work is done, even for me.
Could we be riding an infinite beltway in a finite brane?
A mobius strip could be such endless fun, even for me.
Before light, there might have been logic, if not engineering
or Sunday, except for something begun, but not by me.
I
Backwards, we travel, down the narrow streets of time.
We search for windows into the meanings of our lives.
Somewhere, in between the idle thrum of bumblebees,
I remember a whisper of a kiss brush my lips.
Sifting the loose soil through my fingers, I plant a lily,
a bright spot, stark against the dark earth.
In the garden bold blue jays dart, white-throated quail strut.
From a sunny window we smile and press our foreheads to the glass.
The life we lived drifts into my dreams.
The warmth of your body lies beside mine.
II
I am blind to trees green with leaves.
Deaf to chattering birds, rustling branches.
Light reflects off the windows of our empty house,
Shadows flicker along the wall where we embraced.
I wear your jacket lost in your scent.
Cherry tobacco and a pipe buried in the pockets.
I yearn for the squeak of your shoes on the path.
Your jangling keys and pocket change are my music.
In my dreams we nap in the garden swing,
tend beds of roses, dance in the rain.