What is Love?

It’s that crazy bird

singing full throttle

every song

he’s ever heard

hours before dawn

It’s a fat cypress cone

armadillo fierce

catapulted to earth

to yield meaty flesh

for a chance at rebirth

It’s a snowflake’s filigree

cast upon thorn

a leaf torn beams sun

in death—radiant

It’s a man lost

in dementia and dyskinesia

teetering through traffic

horns blaring

confused he turns

round and round

finds a flower shop

by miracle

navigates home victorious

with wilted anthurium

“a penis on a platter”

in florist lingo

it’s Valentine’s Day

he’s not been able

to make love with his wife

for a decade

yet rude memory

insists that love

ever hopes

             believes  

                           endures

photos:

anthurium: public domain

snow Carrboro, NC  2015-02-24

Solstice Visitor

Blood red moon in the depths of night

On solstice morn takes winged flight

To reappear upon your bonnet bright

Muted cries of war and pain

Soldiers, horses on battlefields slain

Through snowy fields carmine rivulets stain

Newborn babes from wombs emerge

White cloth vermillion hues will purge

Mothers’ placenta—an abandoned dirge

Beneath ocean foam and form

Cavernous shadows hide tides from the storm

Stinging fire anemone tentacles swarm

Hillside sparkles with crystalline snow

Children tumble, giggle, lose mittens and glow

Tummies flat pressed on Radio Flyers – Go!

Red pierces the day, the night, the dawn

Jolly peppermint ribbons stigmata drawn

Rubens, Cézanne capture crimson and brawn

Life trickles and tickles with mutinous ambition

Irrepressible—straining, maintaining commission

To join heaven and earth, bring peace to fruition

All this you told me with your round scarlet head

Perched at the feeder grateful to be fed

In you, celestial desire with innocence wed

~*~                                

Photo: public domain

A male Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). Photo taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 in Johnston County, North Carolina, USA.

This poem was written in North Carolina when I resumed poetry readings in 2010 after a long hiatus.