One Perfect Breath

I loved my experience in Japan last fall. This poem came from that time between waking and sleeping, when your thoughts are a jumble of creative imaginings waiting to be explored.

One Perfect Breath

I fall.

Slumber

catches me,

cradles

my perfect breaths,

my weary bones.

I float

on a river.

It flows by the night

window,

sheltering the white

Egret, the slender,

dark carp.

I rise

a murder of crows

calls,

draws my perfect

breath short.

My sleepy eyes

open to reveal

the clear

day.

Soku Nekko

This is a poem I wrote during a minor typhoon. It was my first typhoon, so I was a bit nervous!

Soku Nekko*

A howl in a dark

space,

a whistle for the wet

cat.

The spit of rain

against my window,

as my heart

races.

*Japanese for outdoor cat

Tuesday

I have Japan on the brain!  I can't wait to get there and start teaching. :)

Running

Running

Sun light strains

through unclean glass

a filter to spring light. 

My eyes throb to see

the blue sky hang

over a haze of April pollen. 

A spasm grips my left hamstring

as I read Thoreau 

and Montaign.

My freer self wanders

to the rain spattered portal

and faces west. 

I would run until my

breath seized on an inhale

stranded on the beating of my heart. 

I struggle against your words,

try not to hear

them scatter my thoughts,

those thin articulations

that lightly smother me. 

The agony I most covet

comes from running

into the storm.

Berries Season

Berries on the Vine

In April opportunity rained

on asphalt, stood in pools. 

It rained on our lawn

and in the hole we dug

to move the disparate Spartan. 

In April chances came

and by May they were gone,

dust gathered on the piano,

In the hollow tick of the cuckoo clock. 

Longer days reached up and out

toward the summer solstice,

but I looked back to the winter

equinox and snowy hibernation. 

In June, the longest day upon us,

we realized our garden’s

fullness, the fertility of horse

manure, the virility of rotted

table scraps.

By July we ate the opportunity

that germinated in April,

and as the dry sun warmed

our shoulders and tanned

our knees, we ate berries

from the vine.

a.m.adams

Bearded Iris

  

Bearded Iris

…and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud 

was more painful than the risk  it took to blossom. 

–Anais Nin

Tightly packed buds rise

on slender stalks

under your bedroom window. 

You watch the flower heads 

each cool spring day. 

Warm days loosen their hold

on purple.  Condensed

in a crepe seal,

they unpack themselves. 

The buds swell beyond

the transparent protection,

beyond the bruised flesh

of awkward youth. 

One morning you wake

to the blue sky competing

with a flock of iris,

and you see your father’s

shoulders,

there in the iris bed,

bent to the ground,

planting.

by Avis Adams