New Poem, "I Know A Lot About Nature"
I Know A Lot About Nature
Thinking about my speckled green pj's,
and the stirring sight of me,
jumping up and down on the bed in them,
my broad, sweet chest visible between the buttons,
you cry alone in your house this a.m.,
while hungry, baby swallowtail butterflies
attack your flower garden in the front yard,
starving, their claws tearing at the tender
pink flesh of the morning-glory petunias,
diving, dolphin-like, into the mulch.
In the lonely driveway of asphalt,
there is a true sadness because I am not there
to give you my body, and you notice a lone squirrel,
see her catching a worm in her beak,
slurping up nutrients into the gullet.
The sun, setting, is always hurtful to the eyes.
As ever, after feeding, the squirrel pulls
its wings in close;it knows, by instinct,
how sharp, how like a knife the night's cold wind can be.
To be honest, I have always harbored
creatures with wings in my belfry.
Because it can get awfully claustrophobic in there,
I choose to allow only those birds I can sing along with.
Perhaps ironically, due to their close ties to bats,
my imagination is an aviary for seagulls.
Because seagulls have all the time in the world.
Your neighbor is an older woman named “Peggy”.
So often, when I was with you, we wondered
what on Earth could Peggy possibly
have been a nickname for. We never found out.
There is a place in your heart, the color of a starting fire,
where you remember the night we discussed
inviting Peggy over for a three-way.
She was only 43 years old.
When we found out that Peggy taught
Sunday school, it was as if God was telling us
there was a limit to his capacity to answer prayers.
You remember now, with a curious smile
as the monsoon clouds give way to the Sun,
how that morning I got stung by a cricket on my bare foot,
as I sleepily trudged down the lane to get the newspaper.
I might have been an idiot for loving you,
but you were a fool for not loving me.
In the back of your mind, in a very small public park,
I am pushing a metal cart of ice cream treats
along a little walkway in the grass.
But no children clamor here, or shriek
for sugary, frozen treats.
That's because it's never daytime in this park
in the back of your mind where I work.
Also, I am continually hassled
by the numerous hoot owls that dart about my head swiftly.
This makes doing what I have to do very difficult.
In this pretty, lifeless place inside of you,
where I make my living, the owls here
stare at me as if I were tremendous.
But these creatures are much larger than me.
Yes, love. They are large.
Large, and carnivorous.
Like hummingbirds.
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June 28, 2009 by Rich Boucher.