Pollarding
I find you in the garden, pruning the trees again.
Even though you tell me it’s good for them
I can’t help but wince every time the blade goes in.
There's something obscene about a tree stripped back to bone,
Prematurely loosened of its petticoats
Naked limbs prodding futilely at the sky
It doesn't know it's lost its purpose,
I think, and it makes me sad.
If left to me all trees would be subjected to glorious abandonment
Petioles unplundered by any hand,
Fruiting to a rhythm of their own devising.
And maybe it's the same for me -
I'd rather be marcescent
Than this surgical paring away of that which does not serve.
Love lessons from the Kraffts
In the volcanology of love,
We're the pyroclastic flow.
We're not Strombolian.
Not for us the gas slugs and the plumes,
the incandescent rooster tail -
They look impressive but they're a thousand year slow-burn.
We're more of the,
destroy everything in our path and bury ourselves under ash so thick it makes fossils of our tongues, kind.
The Maurice and Katia, hand in hand, smiling at the camera in homemade silver lava suits, kind.
Can you move faster than 200 miles per second to outrun this?
Because I can't and I'm about to be flattened.
Hoberman spheres
Right now we're existing in the light
Suspended
High-wire up there
The eagle-eyed among you will spot
Our joins, our inflection points,
Our weak spots
But you won't know when it will all come
Crashing down
We're waiting -
We know it's coming.
We're still in that space between,
Cushioned by air
Marshmallow clapping with all our might
But observe us doseydoe around each other,
Sometimes it feels like it will come right now:
The edges can't hold,
Throw us down!
This was designed into us!
Othertimes it feels like never
That the laws of gravity don't apply to us:
inchforward
inchbackward
For as long as we like
Or as long as we can bear
Or as long as we pretend it's not happening.
Lay us down as timid as our glances,
I feel it, lazy circling.
Flights, Issue Nine, June 2023
Flight of the dragonfly 