What of the winds’ coming and going.
Poetry and painting can show winds
moving through this spring’s uncut grass,
dandelions down the lawn.
In different countries there are often
different names for the Lord and dandelions:
England’s golden lads, chimney sweepers,
France’s dent de lion, Ireland’s Irish daisies.
Some grasses bend toward a sugar maple,
others bend away on the same hillside
because an oak has partially blocked the wind.
No one can count as many dandelions as I can.
I can write and paint a little.
There are ways of telling in words what is,
while a painter may paint the same thing—
sometimes things equal to the same thing
are not equal to each other.
There are words for colors, and colors for words.
Your sparrow, owl, dandelion is feathered,
petaled for passionate reasons.
I cannot smell a cherished owl or sparrow.
In the wind I smell the flowers nearby.
My faithful senses have intercourse
with every available living thing—
on some summer days, I could shout, “Rape!”
I’d rather have ink dry on the page, rewrite,
rewrite, than wait for oils to dry on canvas
before I change colors, burnt sienna
to cobalt blue to Mediterranean.
I mix powdered pigments for paintings and poems:
a poem’s pigment is sound,
the different intimate voice of every word.
In English, there are changing wordcolors,
English is "country dancing" since the Normans—
half truths, how trees spend their weekends,
true to nature, indifferent to seasons.
Music or thunder can be a painter’s model.
Beauty does not interrupt me
like a deer or groundhog in the garden.
Lightning catches my eye. Thunder encourages me.
Yes, it is poetry to say
no sunny day is like any other day,
no rose like any other—
there are lookalikes for lazy eyes.
Words use us. On a sunny day,
I try to follow the winds’ comings and goings.