What if it’s not a poet in me,
but a potato that lies mute, still
as a stone, stiff with all that starch, sweet
beyond all blessed belief? Yet doomed
for some inevitable and — yes! —
edible destiny.

And would all my words abandon me?
All my days above ground have not
prepared me for this single moment
of roundness being next to soundness,
of brownness being wholly skin deep
and just as easily bruised.

A fist, a hand in glove, a hardened
heart. Half-baked, I see more than I am
believing; I have the lumps to prove
it. So what about grief? Don’t ask me.
I only said what if. Much better
to ask a turnip instead.

the Chinese fortune cookie
fortune said, meaning with all
my soul, with all my strength, with
all the fortitude I could
muster. Just that much courage.

I’ve always known this rhythm
my feet make, the left, right, left,
depending on the pavement
with Loose Strife on the shoulders
of the road, Robins dotting
the margins like emphatic
punctuation marks. Mourning
doves coo; cardinals provide
that vital splash of color.

Gravel, asphalt, clay, or dirt,
how to choose? When there’s always
that fifty-fifty chance for rain,
for rubble and construction,
for mud and its myriad
distractions in this green world
where Queen Anne’s lace will rise up
joyful, like red-winged blackbirds
clinging to their flimsy reeds.
My needs become flimsy, too.

I could be walking on eggshells,
without thinking, and the world
around me evolving thoughtless,
the way it was meant to be,
adhering wordlessly to the skin
of my arms and legs, my feet
thumping this taut, hallow ground. 

To view a larger version of this painting, visit the Wikipedia media page about it.

“The Girl with Green Eyes” by Henri Matisse

a Madam X with no other name,
like most of Matisse’s women
stares back at him; she’s hardly
camera-shy.  She has donned
a special hat for the occasion,
deep-crowned and shallow-brimmed
with a contrasting riband.
You can barely tell that she parts
her auburn hair on the side.
Her neck is completely covered
up to her chin by a white collar,
stiff as a wooden bobbin, but
definitely larger than life size.
She refuses to smile.  Perhaps,
it is because her lipstick has
smeared the corners of her mouth.  Or
she is unhappy with the arrangement
of unfinished paintings and fabric
hanging behind her.  She could feel
her face is almost lost among
all those patterns and pieces and
cluttered back wall.  It couldn’t be
the smock she has donned.  Tomato
red and covered with golden dragons
and arches and a solitary
walk in the vermilion garden. 

Marguerite Matisse (“Girl with a Black Cat”) by Henri Matisse

She holds the cat in her lap
like an open book she has
often stooped to read. She’d read
it now, if she had one more
set of hands.  Instead, she runs
her hands over the soft fur
as if her fingers could read
this new kind of Braille, decode
the Morse signals of its purr
that tumble through its lush coat.
In other words, anagrams
of contentment written in
the darkest kind of ink.
The fact that it is all black
and sleeps on her lap almost
everyday has taught her
to sit up in her straight back chair,
ignore the unevenness
of the painted walls behind her
and gaze into the distance.