The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: ekphrasis

  • Sunday Morning (VI, VII, VIII)

    VI
    In heaven in silence sit
    vast statues of stone
    on earth there is no quiet
    stone clouds break open
    what does the thunder say?
    Don’t sit under the apple tree
    fall is the mother of beauty
    with anyone else but she.
    She doesn’t like her picture
    taken nor to be in a poem
    does not care she is beauty
    but takes time with her hair
    avoids rules not her own.
    Heaven falls from the sky
    no heaven no earth below.

    VII
    Words are not a product
    of heaven but of earth.
    Sunday morning returns
    with a cup of French Roast
    under a grapevine wreath
    looped herbs and flowers.
    The coffee smells of earth
    the first gentle rain stirs
    petrichor into the air
    the dry grass two crows
    the cat on the dirt path.
    In heaven no senses no
    tenses no need no rain
    no sun no mud no crud.
    All sense is earthbound.

    VIII
    Sunday morning slows
    autumn leaves falling
    where she lives and walks
    in fine form and talks
    of the lovely noisy
    nights and dirty days
    of clean kitchens
    and open stays
    all means understood
    and confused all reason
    clear and absurd
    peaceful and happy
    stones that turn
    to stories and poems.
    How many choices in one
    heaven on one earth?

  • Sunday Morning (III, II, I)

    III
    Oh my Zeus a girl Suze by Jove!
    No god got involved the parents
    the ruin of beauty and paradise
    a coffee shop she a cupbearer
    waitress to the young men new
    to the surfboard of wet thought.
    The waves roil with oily sludge
    the kids play run from the blob
    of the reclamation plant lazy
    jets from lax prodding probing
    the puffy foggy overcast clouds.
    Bucketed fish guts and heads
    on the pier odors the paradise
    she comes to know and to love
    evening gold and morning blue.

    II
    Why should she give it up to him?
    What is love if he can come only
    in noisy fantasy and nightmare?
    Her dolphins play in their waves
    charismatic and whole while he
    came to end all frolic and family
    for some abstract community
    of musty prayer and the comfort
    of wet sackcloth and cold ashes.
    He who lived within herself
    washed up on a desert beach
    her desserts shells for a shelf
    her soul he saved in a bottle
    labeled I am not to drink in
    letters from a foreign field.

    I
    Malaises of the nightgown and wait
    for the coffee in the well worn bed
    and the matted habit of a real cat
    up in her window seat dome room
    coalesce to repeat the profane
    reminder of ritual dismission.
    She dreams not and moves awake
    with the eye of the storm encircled
    by each newfangled catastrophe
    as wealth darkens among Malibu
    lights across Santa Monica Bay.
    Against a rude screen true bugs
    intrude like the kitchen roaches
    scattering from the sudden light.
    The day is like El Porto happy
    with friends and popular songs
    until the coming of the cat poop
    cup up the stairs all the way
    from the sway of bread and beer.

  • Sunday Morning (II, I)

    II
    Why should she give it up to him?
    What is love if he can come only
    in noisy fantasy and nightmare?
    Her dolphins play in their waves
    charismatic and whole while he
    came to end all frolic and family
    for some abstract community
    of musty prayer and the comfort
    of wet sackcloth and cold ashes.
    He who lived within herself
    washed up on a desert beach
    her desserts shells for a shelf
    her soul he saved in a bottle
    labeled I am not to drink in
    letters from a foreign field.

    I
    Malaises of the nightgown and wait
    for the coffee in the well worn bed
    and the matted habit of a real cat
    up in her window seat dome room
    coalesce to repeat the profane
    reminder of ritual dismission.
    She dreams not and moves awake
    with the eye of the storm encircled
    by each newfangled catastrophe
    as wealth darkens among Malibu
    lights across Santa Monica Bay.
    Against a rude screen true bugs
    intrude like the kitchen roaches
    scattering from the sudden light.
    The day is like El Porto happy
    with friends and popular songs
    until the coming of the cat poop
    cup up the stairs all the way
    from the sway of bread and beer.

  • Sunday Morning (I)

    Malaises of the nightgown and wait
    for the coffee in the well worn bed
    and the matted habit of a real cat
    up in her window seat dome room
    coalesce to repeat the profane
    reminder of ritual dismission.
    She dreams not and moves awake
    with the eye of the storm encircled
    by each newfangled catastrophe
    as wealth darkens among Malibu
    lights across Santa Monica Bay.
    Against a rude screen true bugs
    intrude like the kitchen roaches
    scattering from the sudden light.
    The day is like El Porto happy
    with friends and popular songs
    until the coming of the cat poop
    cup up the stairs all the way
    from the sway of bread and beer.