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Mark MacDonald - 2


Flower Child ~ for Birdie

Suppose it were true: she was abducted by aliens--
bored but gentle beings cruising through the universe,
tired after light years of travel, looking for some proof
of intelligent life outside of the Sunflower Galaxy. 

Suppose, as she told us, that they communicated mostly
through an incredibly refined and acute sense of smell;
that they found the scent of pine needles more pleasing
and more interesting than the citizens of Minneapolis, 

Paris, London, New York or Rome? Suppose that instead
of talking to the President, they landed their spaceship
shaped like a sunflower deep in the Brazilian rain forest
and spent a couple of weeks laughing and singing with the

Crimson Topaz Hummingbirds and sharing their poems,
constructed entirely of sweet and extraordinary scents, 
with a Blue Morpho Butterfly resting on the petals 
of a Passion Flower growing along the banks of a stream? 

Suppose that this were true—suppose that she had been
abducted by aliens with noses as long and as narrow
as a straw—suppose that it were true. Would not this
explain why she moved to the state of Florida,

bought a small cottage and covered its yards
with Baby’s Breath, Jupiter’s Beard, Hollyhock
Mallow and blossoming orange trees? Suppose
that it were true; just consider that it could

have happened. Suppose that she splashes
her neck and her breasts with lavender each
morning and talks to her flowers, not because
she is crazy, not because she is strange, but

because she was abducted by aliens who taught
her the language of fragrances soft and exotic; 
that she stands in her yard with a handful of roses
because what she wants most is to be lifted away?
​

The Daughter of Two Mothers

Born in Des Moines in the late 1930’s,
she never quite understood her father
but felt close to her Aunt—the aunt

who never married and lived
with her friend near a bookstore downtown.

Her mother grew chrysanthemums—renowned
as one of the Four Gentlemen in Chinese
and East Asian art—The Chrysanthemum, 

The Bamboo, The Orchid and the Plum Blossom.
A flower for each season, they belong
to the category of bird-and-flower painting 

in China during the Song Dynasty, according
to her Aunt—the aunt who liked wine
and sometimes ate with chopsticks—the

aunt who never married and lived
with her friend near a bookstore downtown.



The Baker's Dozen

Perhaps in a parallel universe
the truth is neither a journey nor a paycheck,
the Pythagorean Theorem, a collection
of precepts in a medieval manuscript,
a forest, a clearing, a slogan on a t-shirt, or a 
steep granite cliff from which a couple must leap. 

It could be that in nothern New Mexico
what the philosophers call oblivion
is merely a lizard—or a rock and a lizard--
anything gone blank or motionless and
that can sit beneath the sun for hours at a time. 

There may be some options in Syria
the President may wish to consider, 
and perhaps when we are dead, the abyss
is no longer the throat of a panther,

a cup of cold coffee or joblessness;
the wind ends its search and its longing;
and the fires we once called love
will have collapsed into smolder.

 

Phenomena

This bird or that—the pigeon just dropped
to the curbside to feed, 
or the Florida Spruce Jay gone nearly extinct?

An event from your childhood you had
hoped to forget—the long vacant house
and the body of the girl
the police took a year to identify.

Fullness, decline, and decomposition--
anything tethered to process or choked in its time.
Salami, foreclosure, or genocide.

This bird or that—the sparrow just flown
from the clothesline to breed,

or the solitude thrush too startled to sing?


Plot #245
           ~for Trayvon Martin

I want to de-mean things, take away context
and historical background—let each man 
and woman lie nameless and orphaned

from themselves and their phone numbers. 
Who is this child found shot on the lawn?
To what estranged mothers and fathers does

he truly belong? There is a monument shaped
liked an obelisk in the middle of the Capitol; 
The General on Horseback in the midst of the rain. 

But where is the tomb for the causeless 
and the ghosts along the train tracks—the map-less
lieutenants and their floundering platoons? 
 

Ripened on the Vine

Today we are two tomatoes--
Beef-Steak Tomatoes
just ripening on the vine--
just taking in some rays,

turning bright shades of red
at your Grandfather’s farm

just outside of Hoboken on a
Sunday afternoon in June.

“It’s great to be tomatoes on your
Grandfather’s farm near Hoboken,”

I’m thinking. “It is splendid
to be red in New Jersey in June.”
​

​

Comments?

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The Last Pioneer
                              ~for Johnny

Perhaps it was the sun and its train
of yellow smoke that carried him away
to the waters just over the mountain. 

Sometimes in the evening he would stare
in that direction, standing out on the porch
with a cigarette and a beer, looking

at nothing in particular and speaking
in general terms about the changes
in the neighborhood: The children moved

away from their parents to Dallas, LA
and Seattle—the closing of the plant 
and the illness of a friend. Perhaps it was

the geese he watched glide over the house
that sealed his final decision to leave her behind,
pack up the truck and head the hell out

to Wyoming—live quietly in a cabin, hunt his
own meat, tend a few horses and drink whiskey
with the cowboys in a tavern just down the way.

Table for Two—for Kim

I love to write poetry watching you cook:
which piece of meat, chicken or beef,
will know your small hand 
rubbing it gently with garlic and oil?

Which frantic vegetable—a laughing noggin of lettuce,
a flaming hat of celery, the pernicious onion, 
the prodigal tomato—will leap from the bin,
all them shouting, “Pick me! Pick me!
Put us all together dancing in a bowl!”

I love to write poetry watching you cook.

The climax arrives when you reach
into the spice drawer: tarragon or chives
parsley or paprika? Which powdered 
and flaky minstrels will sing to us tonight

at the dining room table, where a candle is lit,

and a glass of red wine waits for the each of us?

Pixelated

Somewhere in the library is a dictionary
for hopelessness—people who have failed
and been failed in love; mothers who

have lost a child; and the last shot
of morphine that could not take the pain
away. Again and again and again.

Ecstasy. Deflation. Listlessness. 
And less after less when the tomatoes
turn rancid, the rabbits go into hiding,

and the band packs away its instruments.
I am old enough to remember
when photographs were costly, usually

filled with people and birthday cakes,
and squared with white frames. Only
the most important moment was poised

and the smallest of fish at the end 
of a pole was something of a treasure
that you shared with the neighbors.

Copies were too expensive though,
and so the spectacles of canyons and
ocean-side people in swimwear sometime

in the 30’s meant something. Perhaps
it is the death of the personal 
that bothers me most today. The illusion

that people lived differently in Oregon 
or Maine that I miss. Too much exposure
to sunlight and to music. Who plays

the sousaphone on Main Street anymore?
What is the value of my Grandfather’s 
last watch beyond what it lists on Ebay? 


On Going Bald

A small pour of coffee at the end of September--
a low talking wind and the first fallen leaves
gone stumbling to the curbside. It’s a little

too quiet in the morning than I am used to.
Nothing makes sense on a Tuesday--
nor should it—but Wednesday herself

is a wee bit beleaguered as well. The women that
I have loved no longer wish to Tango. They have
married more respectable and hardworking men.

I tease with them on Facebook at times--
but the best of my horses have retired
to the barn—my feet are in rebellion

with the rumbas of my heart, and the
flamenco they strike fall sullen to lament.
 

Duende

I can testify flatly that the Earth
has pulled out from under the sea;
and the wine that I drink 
is a tincture of orchids. It is

everything not comfortable--
sex love intelligence photos—granite
and salt. A hat left behind

in the flatlands. Fruit gone to rot
or a sour cup of tea. Whichever 
blue note the oboe leaves behind.

My Move

On a rock covered shoreline on the coast of Lake Superior:
it is late in September and the weather has turned.
We are sitting by a fire at dusk, wearing thick sweaters

and discussing the things we must do to make ready
the cabin for the white heavy Titan of winter.
Slowly, you lean close to me then tuck up your neck

and your cheek to my shoulder: “The wind is picking
up off the lake.” you say, “it’s getting too cold for me
now and I think I will go inside.” What else can I do?

The moon’s disappeared, the loons have stopped
laughing, the fire is dying and I want to stay next to you.


***
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