Robert Ronnow

Not like a figwort


Not like a figwort but not an aster, either. Could he be a buttercup
with sepals, no petals, but sepals like petals? Alan is a bluebeech,
an ash if his books sell. Quick shake hands. Zach’s bald ok, a
magnolia, cone-like fruits a bridge to his neanderthal father.
When did Ben become a chestnut lover? It’s said women are practical
but there’s much variation in their leaves, ovaries. Many are older,
stumps, snags for peckers and porcupines, teachers, feeders, seeders. 
What did the wood thrush sing
                                                         teaching its young thrush meanings?

Sometimes a mushroom. Did you know such fungi are mostly protein?
Mushrooms could replace meat, and the dead, the dead’s feet, white
as pyrola, could replace the living. Well, we worry. Will we bad luck
be extinguished. Denizens of convenience stores think who cares, will
I beat the reaper? Hope sempiternally springs. Things rarely clear
as sun among the sundews. Eating huckleberries from your kayak.
What Paulinaq says is live your life and then your death until nothing’s left.
Then thou shalt be bereft
                                               of the heavy sackcloth of the soil, soul.

Said to Mrs. Buckthorn good poets imitate great poets steal.
I think she’s more an apple tree. Or pear. Good to eat,
amenable to loving. Rose or Ericaceae the differences make the
difference. Emerson and Rylin Malone are dead. The dead
are dumb, the dust won’t speak. And this deep, dull and dark
blessing’s a horizontal reserve. Moonlit. Mr. Hickory is actually a yellow birch,
holy and exfoliating. Busy spilling seed on the surface of the snow.
Teaching essay
                             writing, algebra, earth science, branches of government.

I would be a cypress, cedar, branches calligraphy brushes, divorced from desert.
It takes a divorce for one to know one knows no one not only one’s wife
but your very sons who will always choose the open flower bud.
Good, as they should. Their bones are your bones, strange bones, and a
strange selection of their words. They are Uvularia sessifolia (wild oats)
and Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon’s seal). They outlast the holocaust
or not, they’re made of matter. These windows need a good cleaning.
Leaf-raking. Dusting for ghosts. Ah, sweet peace, perfect rest, there are
no ghosts
                   adults are trees, teens are shrubs, and children are herbaceous.



Adnate to the Funicle


       Accepting aloneness, incomplete solitude, imperfect rest. The garden
wasted, pumpkin patch planted late, potatoes untasted left in ground.

       A thousand email addresses, each unique represents a flame of
passion, compassion, desperation or depression. To understand, to know’s

       impossible. It is therefore only reasonable to observe the shadows
on the mountain, the actions of the dreamer which tell us something,

       little, nothing of his dream. It’s a simple secret shared,
longevity. The half breed John Russell says it right, the

       date and place don’t matter, dry desert or cold mountainside,
lush bottomland, soulless or hospitable, contagious hospital.

       The best laugh’s death’s, a perfect escape, perfect error, perfect
rest. Their solicitude’s unnecessary, grief is temporary, life goes on,

       you go under, underemployed, the undertaker’s never unemployed.
Forensics prove an ovary with two chambers, ovule adnate to the funicle.

Robert Ronnow's most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his website at www.ronnowpoetry.com.
 
 
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