As grass is flexible, a tree is tough:
thus each endures a normal season’s wind.
Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough
to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend;
tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence
and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back
and envy the benign resilience
they know, with all their might, they sorely lack.

I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky
where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze,
and shimmering in it, but was malcontent
with being walked upon like grass. So I
resisted and reached higher, and was rent,
just as a wicked wind will render trees.

The morning thrush and lark, which greet the dawn
or make it, sing no matter who is there
to hear. When that resilience is gone
and nature herself starts to disappear

another Coming will be under way
where souls of things and beings shall impart
new traits to old forms to attend the day-
song; air shall grow ears; soil, assume a heart;

tongues, noses, fingertips and eyes shall be
affixed to blades, leaves, lakes, florescences,
clouds, mist: that all, in all humility,
shall listen, taste, feel, savor all that is
and its anthem, the morning call of birds,
long after you and I are gone, and words.

She stood at six-foot-four,
a miracle, a freak.
Most any wooden floor
she walked upon would creak.
No window, porch, or door
was safe from her physique.

When she stomped into town,
petunias would wilt
and greenery would brown
and pails of milk be spilt,
and weaker walls fall down
and have to be rebuilt.

One by one, in her wake
new houses rose, improved
to withstand such a shake.
And some thought it behooved
them all to let her quake;
but most were still unmoved.

A Task Force was assigned
to meet her face to face
and ask her if she’d mind
staying at her own place,
but she was not inclined
to shoulder such disgrace.

YOU MEASLY LITTLE MEN!
YOU FEEBLE, PUISNY ANTS!
She yelled at them, and then
she kicked two in the pants.
THE DAY I’LL DO THAT’S WHEN
PRINCE CHARMING COMES TO DANCE.

Then suddenly they knew,
as one brave nursed his fan:
Like any untamed shrew,
her problem was — no man.
The Task Force thought things through
and came up with a plan:

They searched far, high and low,
for some brave knight to charm her.
One, six-foot-six or so
but trembling in his armor,
said resolutely NO!—
and then became a farmer.

Would she never be a wife
and know connubial bliss,
but have to live her life
forevermore a Miss
and keep on causing strife
for want of one true kiss?

As year piled onto year
and course trailed after course
at last it became clear
no knight on a white horse
was going to appear
to satisfy the Force.

For in this modern age
much new had come to pass:
and Time had turned the page
from chivalrous to crass.
No longer did youths wage
their fortunes on a lass

in hopes that a true male
could make a lady fair
as in a fairy tale
and former ways, forswear.
They sought no holy grail,
nor damsel in despair.

Up and down the coast
the Task Force searched and panned.
One morning they almost
decided to disband.
Then, in their home town’s Post,
they read that their homeland

had suffered the attack
of a great hurricane
and lay in ruin and wrack
and neighbors had been slain.
They had to hurry back;
priorities were plain.

The Force saw, far and near,
destruction was widespread.
The farmers’ fields were sere
and rivers had turned red.
They shed many a tear
for many others dead.

Where the next village should
have been lay nothing but
torn shards and scraps of wood
clogging up rill and rut:
nary a building stood,
nor office tower nor hut.

Their home town, however,
had been spared from the worst,
its buildings more secure,
recently reinforced.
And they owed it all to her,
whom they had scorned and cursed!

To other nearby lands
beset by far more grief
than joy, our town lent hands
to aid in the relief.
They formed Good Neighbor bands.
Our Termagant was chief.

She had them clear the rubble
that had been tempest-tossed
and go to extra trouble
(of course at half the cost)
to erect the new walls double
so as not to be lost

again. That misanthrope,
by working tirelessly,
reinforced folks with hope
(as much as hope could be,
considering the scope
of the catastrophe).

Our grateful village gave
the Termagant her pick
of men—now, willing—save
the married, old, and sick.
Alas, though, she would have
not one of them — not Dick

or Tom or Harry—none! —
but shouted, red and sore,
IS THAT THE SORT OF FUN
YOU THINK YOU’LL USE ME FOR?
She cursed them, every one,
and slammed her cottage door.

She was as she’d begun:
our Termagant once more.

Its use is not a burden but a clue
There’s something after it, or me, or you.
Rhyme can also make hot arguments

Hop along, less hot, or harsh, or sad;
Or, bind some disparate thoughts, as if they had
A common quality of resonance.

Young boys may have their soldiers, girls their dolls,
But plastic playmates make for lonely souls;

Twins have each other, though, and the delight
Of tickling each other’s feet all night,

Even the thought of which might be enough
To thwart, in part, the flesh-inflicted curse
Suggesting things are here to share, like love,
A night, a couplet, or the universe.

There is a cool fire, one that is inviting
to touch with a half-promise it will not
burn you. I’ve seen it in the eyes
of kindness once or twice. But I saw it
or something like it too when I rode the ferry
from Martha’s Vineyard back to Massachusetts
after a busy day galumphing and happy
when the sun was lowering. Suddenly

the sea turned into a horizontal blaze
and I into a child on a merry-go-round
wanting to clasp the brass ring. At least that
is how the ripples of the sea
attracted me with their powers of enchantment
at about 6:40 just as the day
was thinking about turning again into a night.

It lay as a field of a million salt-sweet poppies
with a carpeted lane in front of the ferry leading
to Wood’s Hole, as if rolled out just for me.
For I had climbed and now leaned like a masthead,
so everyone else on the boat disappeared behind.

And all was orange. Glossy orange, then matte.
And then the conflagration dipped to a mere glisten
and then the spell was gone. But since then I
have believed that even in water molecules,
no less in the air, therefore certainly every solid,
there is fire, which if you are alert and catch,
you can see: There is a luster to the world!

I look for it every time I turn a corner
particularly at twilight, wherever I am,
and in strangers’ eyes as well when I meet them,
which are aqueous as the sea at Martha’s Vineyard
and lit—though from within—by a lowering light.

Midst purgatory’s weedfields sprouts one clover.

On blinded shelves, between the pulp and pap,
a dashed and stashed encryption offers sight

as fortitude is found in looking over
the life of Job, the context of mishap.

And even the most sweat-sopped marish night
about to drown you in its sea of horror
dissolves in dawn: The dark defines the light.

So if I’m looking at a fun-house mirror
or through a curved perverted looking glass
to spot a glimmer through a pane of terror
of what you say shall never come to pass,
it could be that you aren’t looking right.
The dark of sunspots, after all, is bright.