poweron
Dry Pods Dance
MILKWEED POD
Tree Riesener
Live in prayer: contemplative bee in amber,
fly fallen into the maple syrup jug,
Jesus’ downy head rounding Mary’s womb
soft and silky as the inside of a milkweed pod.
Wind tugs and finds a chink;
flying downy seeds gradually pull away into air
like baby birds or girls’ fragile grave-grown hair,
taking airy leave from a milkweed pod.
Twenty-five million bubbles in every bottle of champagne,
forty-four thousand people in the air
at any one time, but no one has counted
the seeds in a milkweed pod.
In lost places-- circles carved into corn or eerie silent sunlight
in the midst of fields standing
still at noon-- ghosts walk with backward feet,
free floaty flowers from a milkweed pod.
Comfort me with kisses, for I am sick with love;
stay me with apples; touch my secret places
soft as mouse’s fur or the excited slickness
of an open, shedding milkweed pod.
Filter sunlight with this stained glass:
silky seeds floating on a beam of brilliance
surrounding him, the prince of silk,
emerging pantocrator on a mandorla milkweed pod.
Honey-fertilized earth still visited by homeless bees;
cicadas, crickets and grasshoppers
have moved into the weedy circle where the tree grew;
left, the potential of milkweed pods.
from:
Dry Pods Dance
MILKWEED POD
Tree Riesener
Live in prayer: contemplative bee in amber,
fly fallen into the maple syrup jug,
Jesus’ downy head rounding Mary’s womb
soft and silky as the inside of a milkweed pod.
Wind tugs and finds a chink;
flying downy seeds gradually pull away into air
like baby birds or girls’ fragile grave-grown hair,
taking airy leave from a milkweed pod.
Twenty-five million bubbles in every bottle of champagne,
forty-four thousand people in the air
at any one time, but no one has counted
the seeds in a milkweed pod.
In lost places-- circles carved into corn or eerie silent sunlight
in the midst of fields standing
still at noon-- ghosts walk with backward feet,
free floaty flowers from a milkweed pod.
Comfort me with kisses, for I am sick with love;
stay me with apples; touch my secret places
soft as mouse’s fur or the excited slickness
of an open, shedding milkweed pod.
Filter sunlight with this stained glass:
silky seeds floating on a beam of brilliance
surrounding him, the prince of silk,
emerging pantocrator on a mandorla milkweed pod.
Honey-fertilized earth still visited by homeless bees;
cicadas, crickets and grasshoppers
have moved into the weedy circle where the tree grew;
left, the potential of milkweed pods.
from: