Shudder
These woods are in a mood right now:
surly, fretful, tense;
a rising wind snaps branches and
one nearly hits my head.
But that’s relaxed compared to you
who criticize my mind:
“you never give a thought to what
might suddenly go wrong.”
And so my veggie burger chain,
franchises coast to coast,
plummets under your stern math,
just like this quick redtail descent,
sharp as talons furback–bound
on a mid-March morning.
Storm is coming, that’s for sure —
wind’s more of a whirlwind now —
nude fluttering branches spiking the sky
as all the birds take shelter.
“The season’s shuddering,” I murmur, and
your tone uplifts.
“That’s poetry, I much prefer it
to your profiteering.”
The fattest raindrop ever seen
almost drowns an ant
hardying up the bark
of a nearby oak.
“Let’s move on with the wind and rain,”
you say,
and lean into my shoulder;
everywhere gaunt branches creak
while rain falls cold as winter.
The Worrier
This sycamore shows some anxiety —
one twisted branch, six drooping leaves, a bend
midtrunk where perfect upness used to be:
perhaps too much time worrying….the wind
might catapult her straight up from the ground;
or acid rain, ground water’s stains, the tilt
of spring to summer cause real pain. No sound
of animal will reassure, no lilt
of warbler’s song nor rustling vole deny
this forest has its share of treacheries.
And listen to her, too; her creaks are sighs
as wistful as this too warm midMarch breeze.
Above a red tail stalks with ruthless gaze,
a source of worry since no tree can laze
and bask in such mild gusts when fiercest spikes
may soon perch-split her bark. Upset, she looks
straight up with leafy eyes; then hawk descends.
The Giddy Triumph of Dank
Lilies wilt.
You’d never know it from their gleam in June,
their solstice-shimmer,
and how the white noon sun
makes their green greener
against a black still pond.
But now it’s cusp-of-late-August,
cicada-shrilled,
and they lie a little listless,
quarter inch from pale,
just a hint of shrivel and brown
though the sun is still exuberant.
Black water gleams,
in the giddy triumph of dank.
Lilies, though, can wilt,
as can we.
Lee Slonimsky is the co-author, along with poet Katherine Hastings, of a 2013 chapbook, Slow Shadow/White Delirium, from Word Temple Press in Santa Rosa CA. His fifth full length collection, Wandering Electron, is out in fall 2014 from Spuyten Duyvil Press of New York City. Poems are recent or forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review, The Classical Outlook, Glass, The New York Times, Otoliths, Poetry Bay, and other publications. Lee conducts a NYC poetry writing workshop called “Walking with the Sonnet.”