Untitled
Round this morning, a dove's cry called
Out through the leaves, into the cold air
To a mate, on autumn's tide lost
Sad and sorrowed, as all the deadened hearts
About this world, the winds hath tossed.


Drifted. I drifted. There were leaves in the air in autumn, snow in winter
flecks of rose and flight in the spring, bright daubs of sunlight came with summer
dancing through the mid-morning dew. And when the day was done, all gone to dark blue,
I would sit on a dock in the river, and just watch the water rise and fall
in satin ripples, catching the city's lights in long bright streaks, rising, falling,
flickering like a flag in the wind, pushing a bottle behind me, into the rocks at shore
making a tinkering sound, and the water when I stared at it, and thought of nothing else,
moved toward me like an endless procession of starlit hills,
gently rolling along, harboring the shimmering flecks of all this world's wandering souls.


The simple perfect. Turtle clawed through grass
half glossy shell, half wet feet, pawing,
lifting and pushing, soft belly along soft dirt,
wet from morning rain, drying with noon sun.


Glow
of drink
sinking,
as the sun
upward creeps.


Nymph
at the pool's edge
the waters curl
flower shapes
around your fluttering legs
flies at the window—
apple
forgotten on the sill.


In April,
The trees rise to be broken
Come October with the winds
When I am
One in many on the train
Heaving through the underground
Where no roots
Reach down.
And only rock with water seeping
Through their cracks.
Cowering in the tunnel of a machine's lair,
Under cover from cold.
In this city
The winds blow
As pointed shapes to empty
The summer littered streets.


Only that there will be sweet water,
from a gentle stream over smooth gray rocks
and along green moss, with trees
for cool shade, and rustic fields
to look out over, at a cottage puffing smoke;
white stucco on the walls, and (fresh) thatch on the roof.
It would be pleasant to live there
and cook fish from the stream, with tomatoes
from the little garden outback,
and hoe in the bright sun, brown,
sandy soil with a white cat
chasing butterflies, on green grass nearby.
Mouse, Owl above gray fields in
night's dark edge, the red barn is
brown in this light like blood
from yesterday's scabbed scratch,
too tired to wash away. Just like mouse
sometimes
too tired to move. To run away
to the underground,
now, to ride
in the cold, October sky.
Fury ever went so flying.
Fury ever came so formed.
Fury never had sounded
so like the humming drone
that collects in the empty spaces
binds, divines, drives
the gentle flock to mad accession
as when, as a child in a field
at its edge with trees above
and high before, casting late
afternoon shadows into the grass
and over my head,
I tore the rotting shell
of some long dead hulk
beached and washed up
upon the meadow's shore
and wound like a paper unfolding
to an atrocious spread, the fury
of a citizenry disturbed, intruded.
And as I ran, with the wasps behind
I watched some close, some drop
dead of exhaustion to graves in the grass.
Eight found their furied mark and cast
my young face to tears.


The trees floated out over the river
and I sat, precarious in their limbs
staring down at the fish,
who's tails beat the water
with a swish, swish! Swish, swish!


Jeff LeBlanc