1630 Nature poems

A clementine Of inclement climate Grows tart. A crocus Too stoic to open, Won’t. Like an oyster That cloisters a spoil of pearls, Untouched— The heart that’s had Enough Stays shut.

When the rain hits the snake in the head, he closes his eyes and wishes he were asleep in a tire on the side of the road, so young boys could roll him over, forever.

It is their way to find the surface when they die. Fish feed on fish and drop those beautiful bones to swim. I see them stretch the water to their need as I domesticate the separate air to be my breath. These fish die easily. I find my surface in the way they feed. Their gathering hunger is a flash like death. No agony as if my mind had eaten death.

The field blank in snow. But I mean this page. Now print mars the surface to make surface Seen. Sheen only error brings. Perfect rage So the sun rises. Rage is your slow practice That makes of every day another day In whose gathering promise the shy sparrows Shiver instead of sing. I want to go away. See these footsteps? These black shapes in the snow? If there is a word for them, it’s no word I know.Pursuit?, no.Proof?, no. Don’t call it fear. Could I cross this white sheet if I were coward, Edge to edge, margin to margin, never Referring to anything outside itself?— Stop that. Stop pointing to the photo on the shelf.

Octopus floating in earth’s ink-ore core whose arms extend up here as trees may your branches squirt their black across my pages please

There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction, How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds, For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactnesses Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged, Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.

How long and thin she seems today a field of mustard smiling up at the sun it draws her eyebrows together in a little pain I don’t think I ever saw calligraphy of geese like this overseas oaks and pines pretending to be asleep not quite dark yet as it is at home poor people, midnight

In a minute among the river reeds I will debut my composition a urine-stained quilt is the flag of early summer rain and when I open my mouth not even a bird singing contains all my ideas for rising and falling all day my phone vibrates its tiny mouth in the mountain’s shadow

I have written a couple of poems about trees poems about trees and snakes and lakes and birds poems about nature and life in New England I write crappy poems and eat babies if you like poems about trees you’re in for a treat when I get nervous I get hyper and bump into people I read to them what MapQuest gave me round during then in the mom seeker panties to help me narrow down the slut thing word jobs

As P strolled the path around the pond, he sniffed the humid air. His kimono brushed the parched ground. The metals of the earth rose up in traces of dust and hints of lightning: a waft of petrichor, the smell before the rain. Beyond the pale hills of his peaceful land, scores of horse soldiers prepared their armor. Soon the soldiers would sweep across the plains, and the dry politics of princely maneuverings would be as rice paper soaked with blood. Instead of petty policies — immensity. Peaceful farmers would be impaled, paltry officials imprisoned — twisted, screaming, then praying. There on the dusty path the young poet P was just perceiving the beforeness of it all, the pre-. From his masters he had learned that immensity makes the small crucial. A little poem before a big war becomes a necessity. And like a small poem on a long scroll, a lily pad appeared on the pond. P stopped to peer. He puzzled through its pattern of green inside green on water. A poem began to perfuse. It was inside P, but it was also on the lily pad. At...On...    At first only prepositions came to him. He stared into the water, seeing the silvery clouds reflected. Then he leaned at an extreme angle and noticed the pattern of his gown wavering in the reeds. A pinpoint of a poem stabbed him, like the sharp scent of earth before the rain. Petrichor:before, before. • Then drops pelted the pond, pipped at the pond, plunged toward it, plummeted into it, driving P to take refuge beneath the deep tiled eaves of his house. Inside the sliding paper doors were a desk and a futon. On the desk lay a brush. On the futon lay a lover in uneasy sleep on petal-printed silk. He chose the desk. He lifted the brush while looking down at the restive slumberer. In a mere matter of stopped time he had his poem, written from the very tissues of an arm and hand that could plunge a sword. Silver soldiers mass on far horizons, but here, silk pools on the bed. The rain rained; moisture curled the edges of the paper. Seventeen syllables, an epic of energy, made him drowsy and hungry. His lover still asleep, he rose, ate leftover peaches poached in soy sauce and ginger, and, with the rain a drizzle, thought again of his poem. How could he have loved it in the instant after he wrote it, but now be so unsure? He sat at his desk again. Another one? This time he drafted: Poppy? Penis up. Prow into periwinkle. Peony behind. After he calligraphed the puzzle of passion across the page, he woke the one in the pond of pink silk, and they proved it on the futon. He heard the pluvial patter on the eaves, while they angled and slipped, perspiring on silk. The stamping and snorting of the horses sweating in their armor was far too far away to be sensed by P, but he heard. He felt the pond muddied and the roof cracked and the poems scattered. How far was he now from this picture in his mind? He worked to make his pleasure stay, pitiable and small against the portents rising, for P was afraid this afternoon would never be remembered after the bloody conquering. But later the barbarians would bivouac in this house, the pond saved for drinking water, the path roughened by horses, and the 
reverse of P’s scroll used for another man’s military diary, his afternoon’s foreboding and pleasure a preparation for the future, and in the future, a stay against another’s view of the past. “P from Alphabetique,” 2013 by Kara Kosaka