Poems of the Climate, I

(After Eliot's Waste Land, of course)

December is the weird-ass month, raising

Daffodils from dozing land, mixing

Hallmark cards and bafflement, mudding

Up our seasons with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, no joke there,

Earth in forgetful grey, not even

Bothering to freeze the ticks.

…

I read, the long evenings, drive north and it stays warm.

What is the tropic here, what equinox

orders this unfrozen scene?  Son, hey son,

You’re quick to say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, affixed to tweets,

And the almond gives no shelter, the Gulf Stream no relief,

And the Arctic the sound of water.…

I will show you fear in a season of rain.

Poem: Tongue-tied leaves

Why shouldn’t all things be oracular
for one whose words
get swallowed or perch
on the tip of the tongue?

Tongue-tied leaves,
pleading in sworls
of orange, green, and crinkled brown;

Beech-bark maps
of coasts, swamps, broken lands,
the wen or burl of settlement;

Ridges spelling out lines for the sky,
and even clouds, old tricksters,
dropping their sticklebacks and mouses’ ears to say,
Hear me down there, listen and
lend me what you have.