Alphabet City

I like to imagine 
she smiled, even laughed, 
her folly, rolling, the gentle hill,
shoulder o’er shoulder to rest 
where azalea meets lawn, face-up, 
the warm sun.

A bird sings,
pretty pretty pretty

The voice 
of the wind,
alluring, contralto.

Light brushes
on the canopy,
like cymbals,
keep time.

A damsel and a dragon-
fly flit away, stutter-step, near-
collision mid-air.

She unfolds,
blossom and pulse,
at the center, the source:

The aroma of grass
newly mown, pink buds open
against the blue.

And the clouds.

cc: Chagall 2025

Hummingbird,
I love you.

Flitting at the feeder, 
sipping sugar-water. 

A long quenching draft. 

You hover high, low,
left.  Right in front of me. 

Then lift-off — 
I watch you ascend;

I trace your zigzag, 
emerald and scarlet 
against shadowed pine,

until you meld 
with the sky and I 
see you no more. 

Away 
to southern clime. 

One full night, alone in flight…

Will you remember me,
the lilac, the holly left behind?

Someday I will 
fly beside you.

Under new constellations. 

Never more alive than
when in the warm updraft with you,
the moon on the gulf below,

and plentiful nectar near. 

cc: Chagall 2025

I should
sketch this rather
than write it.

Paint or sculpt it
even; 

odd…the music leaves
no trace, like a lyric and a score do,

I’d sing it,
not unlike a tree.

A sky is all
I need; a bright
wash of light,
sweet lemon near
the edges where
the senses and color
bleed.

I can always paint
this poem, this page, 
this book in my hand,
in my mind looking down
at these steps, 

gazing up
from this world, this pen, 
this brush, this bow, and
I live on.

cc: Chagall 2025