Thank you for joining me here…

        

and for reblogging my words only with credit.

by the way, if you want to “talk” with me privately, you can email me at jane.woodman@gmail.com.

If you want to find me,

I’m on Medium. This blog is now a storage site. I’m mining it but not writing here because the site no longer works fully for me.

Can anyone help me restore full functionality to my WP site?

I need a place for my poetry, but not being able to edit makes WP unusable.

I can no longer edit my own posts.

So I am giving up on WordPress.

Cycle Sonnet

These are the rewarded days when beans

In green and purple rise through briefest night,

And dun-faced squash reveals it’s fired heart

At once in concert with fall’s crystal and light.

While brias-fanned leaves go speckled with the change

To new, less heated days and kinder dark,

Their fruit still grows with generosity

To make seed for next spring’s fresh growing spark.

Beet leaves like sails now flourish in the chill

Beside the desperate peppers’ hurried seed

And hopeless flowers of tomato vines

Soon lose every condition that they need.

Still each casts forward its own future source

Its tiny miracle of Life’s pure force.

Sunday Morning

This still Summer Sunday

quiet shimmers in early sunlight

with the hoverflies and beetles

waking in the gardens.

Even the gravel trucks and tractors

that will again rip the asphalt

outside my windows tomorrow

powered by bones of mastodons

and heat of human hands,

sit silent, gears slowly coating

with morning’s dew and dust.

Only tiny garden beasts

the painted milk snake and the toad

take a final turn in the wet air

before hiding their soft beauties

in the hollows of weed and stone.

Something stirs and whirs,

cicada or cricket or bee or all,

calls the first ray creeping

across the fennel and milkweed

along the wires of wild strawberry

and summons the day.

Music for a Stormy Night

Piccolo of fireflies, oboe of gray toad,

far-off strings of starlight whisper secret music’s code.

Heavy air, its promises of cymbal-crashing light

harmonize with moondrone until clouds overtake the night.

Now percussive raindrops beat their welcome rhythms, first

on dancing tree leaves, later quenching grateful gardens’ thirst.

All the Earth extends her arms and raises her baton

And every creature sings its song – the harmonies go on.

Then Dawn creeps–silence falls–all creatures rest, each one

until bright lilies wake again to trumpet up the sun.

Untitled Summer

Listening tastes best when it’s mostly silence

lying light on the tongue

light like the glance of an eye that loves you

and knows you are always within sight.

This glowing green day is covered with quiet sounds

wrensong punctuating the slow hum

of far-off breezes and summer insects

gently touching the yellow cucumber blossoms

the white and lavender potato flowers

working their tiny-footed magic in the sun.

Little blond dog closes his eyes

one blue, one brown, both slitted slightly

at the occasional crunch of tires on the corner

or sharp chipping cries of the chipmunks

that haunt his dreams and tease his waking.

My book lies open in patient invitation

but the gardens tell a longer story

set to the music of metal chimes singing random songs

harmonizing with the gentle July sunlight

a mid afternoon chorus of small singers

with wings of all sizes and colors or none.

The floor is cleared for dancing in here

but the rounds and reels of growing things

in the sunlit spaces that surround us

make more slow magic in their graceful growth

than any these separated hands and feet can do.

Who is it I betray when I fail to pay attention

to the long song of quiet summer days?

The wren still sings without my hearing

three sizes of bumbles still hover over clover

orange trumpets of the giant vine still offer

hummingbirds better food than I make for them–

even the little blond dog dreams of digging

all the way to where a thousand chipmunks huddle

without my watching his paws twitch

whether or not I hear his sleepy hunting yips.

This endless turning wheel of seasons

the face of every day different from all others

whether coated in the golden honey of sunlight

or in Winter’s precious crystalline show

all so vastly varied that no mind can hold it

flows through and around every moment

singing silently, its relentless beauty

an offering no less rich nor more

for being seen by squinting eyes.

Harmonies

Grey blankets the sky

lowers the city’s ceiling

to make clanging of church bells

run across pocked streets

fill the holes to overflow

continue impossibly uphill

to my green sanctuary

to its altar of poppies

of beets, cabbages, tomatoes-to-be

where wrensong skitters and skips

across the bellsong

etching ornaments on the fulsome sound.

Wrensong haiku

Even wrensong stops

in mid-afternoon simmer

of her leafy greens

Wrensong

House wren’s single three-part song persists

Across all hours of the sunlit day;

While drenched in heat and light or cloudy mist,

She sings to send intrusions far away.

She sings – he sings – for warnings, not for me –

For celebrating nests and eggs, for light,

The nesting box or its protecting tree–

Their song shapes a world hidden from my sight.

I can no more imagine what they know

Than see myself through your mind formed by love;

All I can do is celebrate their show

And let the music drift down from above.

The song for them – for us – remains unchanged,

Itself enough for all our lives’ wide range.