LETTER HOME
The night of nights approaches
From somewhere bright with day
No score is left to settle,
the games are left to play.
The lull of lemon zanies,
On fruitcake fields of gray,
Delights the doldrum downing
A screaming gleam away.
Be near and still, be silent,
There is no spell to tell,
And when you curse the tyrants,
Be sure to curse them well.
No snow on yonder mountain
Will hide the love below,
No ice upon the meadow
Will make the wonder grow.
And when the sun is waning
In another planet’s sky
Be sure to send me pictures,
And teach me how to fly.
HIBISCUS
She was never meant
for the delicate rhythm of stereotypical seasons.
Temperatures that wilted roses
painted her with a radioactive blush.
Attacked by the salt-scouring wind
She merely exfoliated, a stranger to sunburn.
Nourished in rock-concert strobelight rage,
Swallowing supernovas in the intergalactic age,
she was an excess of nuclear radiation and bad soil
tie-dyed in bubblegum and lipstick
dancing along the ridge of a hurricane,
a deep-rooted nomad of the unfurling rain.
SHERWOOD SALUTATION
They told me you were dead—
My old friend, Robin Hood,
When I came to the end of the story
They told me you were dead.
But the news—
like everything else about you—
Must be greatly exaggerated, for
I ran into you yesterday.
Not quite as I remembered,
but it was
you, all the same.
Launching sporting arrows
into the warm rich world of summer afternoon sun
that divine jewel-bright workmanship of light
lending a bit of heaven’s color to
our Sherwood:
verdant green splashed with
cerulean blue under twisting pillars of
smooth rough towering oaks.
You and the Merry Men
took the forest as your style
In the green of leafy shadows,
dull grey of ancient forbidden wood
calmly glowing
brown of
a smile always in your eyes
and laughter quick to follow.
Illustrations: Hannah Robinson