Friday, July 27, 2012

cagean: i have few things to say, & i am saying them


i have nothing to say


and i am saying it--


--john cage


***


i had a dogwood tree in the back yard when i was a little girl in virgina.


what tree did you have


when you were a little girl?


today was a dog, dog day.


thank dog it's night now.  cooler, more hopeful, somehow.


Dogwood
BY WILLIAM JOHNSON





Dog days doggone dog-tired dogwork of summer,
mowing the grass we're all coming to



the dog tags of you, me, I, we, stashed in a box,
doghouse throwaways. Even the namesake


tree whose blossoms some call Jesus-flowers
for the rust-grooved tips of the petals


as if nails now removed had indented
the shape of a cross, betrays my mood


how all those springs ago
seeing our tree nailed with bloody after bloody


crucifix I said this beauty's no foo-foo
and sure enough my dog-weary dearie


mowing today, the spring long gone,
I brush a limb on whose tired leaves mites amble


the edible thoroughfares and as if to confirm it,
our neighbor's mutt runs along the fence yapping


dogwood dogwood dogwood as the mower chugs on,
our train leaving for the city beneath the grass.

2 comments:

  1. So good.

    I'm sorry I didn't send you a personal delivery confirmation when my amazing book(s) arrived in the mail. Three-in-one! Tripleplusgood!

    I was planning to give you a shout at first sight of my bound beauty. (Hardback! You sent me hardback!) It showed up, right on schedule, I'm sure, on the day of a personal crisis—an intimate encounter with something (somebody) so soul-offensive that I cried without stopping for two days and then let the tap run at a continued drip for the rest of the week.

    So I call this shipment of Cameron a Godsend, perfectly timed. I gratefully read through my weepings and gnashings and blood-sore eyes. Bless you and bless Julie and bless Julia. I love that it arrived from a business called Smiling Pebble.

    Hello to morning pages and artist dates. Hello to climbing back into my right mind. What a nice gift. Thank you!

    Also, a day or so before the book(s) arrived, I was walking in the cemetery and a flood of inspiration hit me, as if in readiness for the new discipline—a story told itself to me about my great-auntie who died in an asylum. I wonder where else this will take me.

    I should have emailed you this instead of cramming it into your comments section. Well, anyhow, I'm happy and so appreciate you. Hope to compare notes as the journey rolls along.

    xo

    ReplyDelete
  2. so glad it arrived in a timely manner. i want to hear more about your experience with it, and more of everything. xxoo.

    ReplyDelete