(c) Judy Baxter, 2005
Her Summermindedness
Her summermindedness
embraces all full green things
& banishes nothing.
The dragonfly helicoptering
over the pond the deerflies
harassing the swimmers
& the leech on the leg linger forever.
Everything a scale
of clear intervals
no roadkill can mar.
The baby spiny thing
rubbing itself against
or was it scratching
the bark of a thin tree
by the roadside.
The speechless waddle
caught in the headlights
of late cars by the lake
moonlit and perfect
for canoeing in her summer mind.
O porcupine
spine in the mind
even a blithe summer mind
swerves from your shine
✖
Broadband
Before I open my mind
to the sludge
the open connection
will carry
let me tarry
with archaic diction
and ancient bodies
the sun & my own
shaped by a code
unfolding itself
through millennia.
For thousands of years
art had no fashion
was the beautiful
drawing we did.
In cave after cave
the ochred bison run
by charcoaled aurochs
and a delicate ibex
an opposable thumb
grasped. Don’t think
they’ve gone
from your mind
I remind myself
rousing from sleep
the screen of my brain
✖
Enough
The storm dissolved
into sun.
We had no expectation.
The clouds full
of pomp ignored
whatever
the wind did
below. It was enough
to flow or float
or clouden
a clouded sky.
A robin flew by
the scratch
of a baby red squirrel.
We told ourselves
we would read
like Wallace Stevens
nothing for six weeks.
The world was full
as it always was
of wings of meaning & nothing.
✖
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