Leaf Blower by Ayla Rogers

Leaf Blower by Ayla Rogers

The gnarled oak has turned from your window.

Its foliage, once well-fed by the light,

Reflected from the clear and vibrant panes,

Now hungers for some bright invitation.

Its leaves now languish in the dimpled glass,

Tattered from such fierce and frequent thrashing

To wake you from winter’s hibernation.

Reluctantly, it turns back toward the sun.

I have tried eating your light, your sunshine.

I have tried to win your fleeting patience.

But these limbs are tired and crave caress,

For which a passing breeze better provides.

Rustling my new spring growth, clumsily,

But with infinitely more tenderness

Than a single pane, closed against the heat

Of bark’s seductive and blossomless bite.

Like the oak, my utility is more—

I tell myself—than the mere aesthetic.

These gnarled neural networks grow, and build

Their own paths, stools, and curio cabinets.

These twigs bare richer and more lasting fruit

Than the blushing cherry, the swollen peach.

They can sustain us through the dark season,

When our dwindling dreamscapes haunt us most.

I’m not going anywhere, so you can

Swing from my branches and climb down my trunk;

When your room finds you aging too quickly,

I can shade you from counting your sunspots.

Though men may never carve me into much--

Executive desk or four-poster bed--

Some corporate perk to keep and boast of,

You can trust my roots are firmly planted.

I will stop carving their names in my flesh,

And the bark of the old gnarled oak tree.

I will cease beating at the window pane,

Realizing the glory of reflection. 

                                                                                                                    

Poem of the Day: April Inventory

by W. D. Snodgrass

The green catalpa tree has turned

All white; the cherry blooms once more.

In one whole year I haven’t learned

A blessed thing they pay you for.

The blossoms snow down in my hair;

The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.

The sleek, expensive girls I teach,

Younger and pinker every year,

Bloom gradually out of reach.

The pear tree lets its petals drop

Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now

I have to nudge myself to stare.

This year they smile and mind me how

My teeth are falling with my hair.

In thirty years I may not get

Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,

I made myself a little list

Of all the things I’d ought to know,

Then told my parents, analyst,

And everyone who’s trusted me

I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about

A book or memorized one plot.

Or found a mind I did not doubt.

I learned one date. And then forgot.

And one by one the solid scholars

Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.

I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;

One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.

Lacking a source-book or promotions,

I showed one child the colors of

A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,

To bark back, loosen love and crying;

To ease my woman so she came,

To ease an old man who was dying.

I have not learned how often I

Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie

Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;

That my equivocating eye

Loves only by my body’s hunger;

That I have forces, true to feel,

Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority

And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,

My eyes in spectacles shall see

These trees procure and spend their leaves.

There is a value underneath

The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,

We shall afford our costly seasons;

There is a gentleness survives

That will outspeak and has its reasons.

There is a loveliness exists,

Preserves us, not for specialists.