Tag Archives: gabriel gadfly

I Have Put The Red Wheelbarrow To Use

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Since your leg is broken
and you cannot easily go out,
I have brought the garden
into your bedroom.

I have emptied your
chest of drawers of your
underwear and your shirts
and filled it with clean
black soil, with explosions
of yellow red chrysanthemums,
clustered bellflower,
stalks of bright snapdragon.

There are sunflowers
standing in the closet
where you hung your
summer dresses
(it was the only place
the sunflowers would fit.)

It has taken me hours
to cover the floor with
dark sweet earth and
fill the carpet with
fresh shoots of grass
(yes, I even brought
the green beetle,
the wriggler earthworm,
the polka-dot ladybug,
because I know
how you love them.)

Be careful with the
wisteria hanging over
the bed. It is tacked up
only precariously,
but it was a necessary
final touch.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Hot Air Balloon

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I could fill hot air balloons
with the heat of this emotion.
Orange balloons, blue balloons,
rainbow striped balloons
soaring over green hills
and your small white house.
Look up, I’m waving down at you.
Here’s a rope ladder.
Climb up, sit next to me
in this wicker basket
and we’ll chase the sun
even as it dips under the earth.

Even if it escapes us,
even if it grows dark,
we’ll float along under
every rich star in the sky,
but if you want to reach them,
you’ll have to kiss me.
Burn a little hotter, hotter,
and promise the atmosphere
we’ll come back down soon
(a promise we don’t have to keep)
and fill our arms with as many
stars as we can hold.

Bite into one like a fruit:
juice like light on your tongue
but I taste that every time
my lips meet yours.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Giantess

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Your face,
eight feet by nine
on sanded willow,
could devour me.
I am caught up
in the breadth
of your lips,
in the pigments
chosen to depict
your skin.
I have been standing
here for hours,
simply staring,
when the museum steward
pauses on a tour,
says “She always
find admirers.”

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Garden Crimes

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Here I am.
Here am I.
I hear A.M.:
the fizzle-crack
of sunlight bursting
seeds in the soil
of these sleep-thick eyes.
I am here.
I am here.
Here, ami,
Tend my roots with your trowel-blade.
but nick no worms–
they are innocent.
Ah, me, here
is the gavel-truth:
these flagstones are a penance.
The moss on my lips the bailiff.
I am here-
by sentenced, juried by worms
and judged by blossoms
bursting from my flesh.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Flowers In The Sink

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I am sorry,
but I have filled
your bathroom sink
with wildflowers.

You cannot use it
to wash away your
eyeshadow and blush
and certainly not
to brush the evening
from your teeth,

but you may,
if it please you,
pick one or two –
orange poppy,
purple lemon mint,
white yarrow, perhaps,
to take with you
to bed.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Estuary

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Today, I walked out to the river,
took off my shoes and my socks,
and sat with my ankles in the water.

I watched a maple leaf
float by, bobbing like a ship
on its way to the sea,
and thought of joining it.

How easy to would be
to slip into that water
and ride it into the ocean,
so far out the sun has
to come down and drown behind it.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Elegy

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I.
These staring trees know more about you
than I have ever known. I know you
only by a name, a photo, memories
gleaned second-hand from mutual friends
who knew you when I did not.
But I have this for you: I wish you
sincere peace. I wish you comfort songs
and grace songs and songs to gently crack
the egg of your new life. I wish you bright
bursting-forth into new life.

II.
I cannot look at these old cedar men
without thinking of you. Why did you
choose this place? Did the storm and
the dark fuel you? I fancy this a place
of serenity for you, as it has been for me,
but I do not know if that thought holds
any truth, I do not know. I have only
this for you: I wish you all that you
sought and could not find. I wish you
a compass light and a fine path to
bring you to the pouring waters that
could not in life fill you up.

III.
I expected the whimsy grins of these
strange trees to sour in your wake,
but they did not: the sun is bright,
the air is clear, and birds are filling
the trees with songs, perhaps because
you have endowed your talents to them:
I am told you had a gift for music.
So I have this for you: I wish you
the knowledge that those you loved
and who loved you will continue to
bloom, that they will embrace you
when they embrace the sun, the air,
the melodies of songbirds singing,
that the new journey you have
embarked upon will bring you back
to them in ways you and they have
not yet imagined.

In memoriam Allen Matthew Barber

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Ecclesia Tree

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Suppose He hung the fruit
on the highest thorny branch.
Ascetic, stripped
of its rind
by Heaven’s gustings,
its stained-glass flesh
denuded and mateless.
Unbuttressed save
its tenuous stem,
do you think it still would long
to taste the lips of
virgin genesis?

Of course it would.
Had He not said
Be fruitful and multiply?
The serpent was merely a matchmaker.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Earth Heals Herself

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

After the rain passes,
lay out on the wet grass.
Feel your clothes soak:
seat of your pants,
back of your thighs,
shoulderblades pressed
into the damp earth.

Hold your palms over
the blades of grass
re-greening, newly sharp,
prickles of the ground
washed clean of the dust.
Breathe the scrubbed air,
forget smog haze and
runoff sheen, lay out
on the wet grass
and feel the Earth
healing herself.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.