"You are the hummingbird that comes"

Craig Arnold

You are the hummingbird that comes
a pure vibration wings a blur
propeller-burring a million beats
to keep still the world's littlest pivot
spinning the heaven's hemisphere
as a wineglass with a wet finger
laid on the rim to make it ring

Feathers a rainbow how you reel 

hovering over blossom cheeks
tucked into the honeysuckle
to lap a single drop of nectar
onto your tongue messenger-goddess
kicking a gold-dust of pollen
out of your winged heel

The slow promise of your approach
makes my throat thick the joy gathers
deep in my spine as if it were a snake
making a smooth wave of muscle
toward the taste of water

Love Cook 

Ron Padgett 

Let me cook you some dinner.   

Sit down and take off your shoes   

and socks and in fact the rest   

of your clothes, have a daquiri,   

turn on some music and dance   

around the house, inside and out,   

it’s night and the neighbors   

are sleeping, those dolts, and   

the stars are shining bright,   

and I’ve got the burners lit   

for you, you hungry thing.

Test # 1: 김밥

 

I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone

Stephen Dunn

The dogs greet me, I descend

into their world of fur and tongues

and then my wife and I embrace

as if we’d just closed the door

in a motel, our two girls slip in

between us and we’re all saying

each other’s names and the dogs

Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,

people-style, seeking more love.

I’ve come home wanting to touch

everyone, everything; usually I turn

the key and they’re all lost

in food or homework, even the dogs

are preoccupied with themselves,

I desire only to ease

back in, the mail, a drink,

but tonight the body-hungers have sent out

their long-range signals

or love itself has risen

from its squalor of neglect.

Everytime the kids turn their backs

I touch my wife’s breasts

and when she checks the dinner

the unfriendly cat on the dishwasher

wants to rub heads, starts to speak

with his little motor and violin–

everything, everyone is intelligible

in the language of touch,

and we sit down to dinner inarticulate

as blood, all difficulties postponed

because the weather is so good.

(I ❤️ playoff bb)

***I forgive ***

Going There

Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.

The unbearable, dearest secret

has always been a disaster.

The danger when we try to leave.

Going over and over afterward

what we should have done

instead of what we did.

But for those short times

we seemed to be alive. Misled,

misused, lied to and cheated,

certainly. Still, for that

little while, we visited

our possible life.

Dandelion Insomnia

Ada Limon

The big-ass bees are back, tipsy, sun drunk

and heavy with thick knitted leg warmers

of pollen. I was up all night again so today’s

yellow hours seem strange and hallucinogenic.

The neighborhood is lousy with mowers, crazy

dogs, and people mending what winter ruined.

What I can’t get over is something simple, easy:

How could a dandelion seed head seemingly

grow overnight? A neighbor mows the lawn

and bam, the next morning, there’s a hundred

dandelion seed heads straight as arrows

and proud as cats high above any green blade

of manicured grass. It must bug some folks,

a flower so tricky it can reproduce asexually,

making perfect identical selves, bam, another me

bam, another me. I can’t help it–I root

for that persecuted rosette so hyper in its

own making it seems to devour the land.

Even its name, translated from the French,

dent de lion, means lion’s tooth. It’s vicious,

made for a time that requires tenacity, a way

of remaking the toughest self while everyone

else is asleep.

The Abandoned Valley

Can you understand being alone so long
you would go out in the middle of the night
and put a bucket into the well
so you could feel something down there
tug at the other end of the rope? 

Jack Gilbert