DURING INCESSANT RAIN IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, FOR THE NEW YEAR

FIELD

Campanula


The worked-over, obscure worries blur gold
In drying grass. Now that you’re back I’m jazzed.
From standing out in the electric field,
In your hand the cut wild flowers buzz.

We get to jump with poppies, as sex-crazed—
Such fluttering in warm wind, where the sun
Burns all the little lies I told away.
We’ve watched butterflies. Whose wing-edges burn

Frail in bright sunlight, frail... wearing away,
Like ancient wallpaper. Summer wears on,
Frayed at the edges.—Registering dismay
You turned your gorgeous face full on me. One

Was once a handsome swain, or city kid
Of average looks, perhaps. One wants to please
In some capacity, however bad.
I’m epidemiologist to bees.

But since I’ve failed to help them, the wild flowers—
Render their judgment, and, —I should be torn
To pieces by the coyotes, for hours
I haven’t put in, trying to heal the burn

My body’s made in what was once as pure
As arctic air—I mean that other world
We plunged into as kids, of chill water
We’d drink from swift, tea-colored creeks, unboiled,

To lie on sunwarm rock, a laughing noon
That agitates our quantum of the free
Happiness, showering photons, while the sun
Stands still a minute, where it’s supposed to be—

With nervous energy, surviving bees
Lay down their worry lines, find hanging bells
Chiming a kind of silence, a sweetness,
As from some lost city of golden cells.