Category: Poetry

Walking through a nursery
   A nursery of plants
Is to stroll through the potential
   Of the future
The future of a different space

Each plant can be lifted
   Lifted from the pot
   Soil falling through your fingers
And placed into a new place
   A place, a void, a hole that was prepared
   Just for that plant

Walk the rows
Browse
Dream
See tomorrow

I found two flight feathers
in the mew this morning
Primaries, both from the left wing

The book says it doesn’t work that way
There’s a genetic sequence involved
There’s an order of things

Clearly

Someone didn’t read the book

---

Note: I’m a volunteer with RISE Raptor Project, a conservation organization which works with a variety of birds of prey. More information on the organization can be found here: http://riseraptor.org/

To experience a walk as one who dares
to stride in another’s stead
is to begin, but only to begin, to understand

You’ve not cried the tears
your heart has not been torn asunder
but you’ve chosen to walk in turn
where another—without choosing—must tread

Walk near with a heart ardent
Walk as one who dares

—

This poem was written as part of a challenge to end every line with a word containing only the letters found in a single word.  For this poem, the word is “understand.”

Or, “On Eisegesis”

For the sake of illustration
Let’s say the good teacher is passing through town
Astride a purple donkey

There are no purple donkeys, I know
This is just to illustrate a point
Also, hardly anyone rides a donkey through town these days

Two men, one a fool, are walking toward each other
On the side of the road
They meet, just as the teacher passes

From his purple donkey, the teacher turns toward them
“The two of you,” he says, almost whispering
“Love one another”

One man decides then and there to love the other, but
The fool, thinking of his own purple donkey at home
Finds satisfaction growing in his mind and smiles

Knowing he has already fulfilled what he heard commanded him

An American plum tree is currently leafing out
In the corner of my kitchen
It’s wrapped in a plastic bag 
Nestled in moist peat moss or some such material 

We’ll decide on a location, my wife and I, then plant it
That’s no easy choice, since this tree--a shrub, really
Puts down roots that spread widely  
Into the surrounding soil

These roots bring new growth to the surface
Eventually forming a hedge
Placing a plum shouldn’t be taken lightly
Those roots make it hard to move.

Do they, these plants, these birds, these fish, these things
We call invasive
Do they ever drop that label?

In my perfect world, the world I want to see
The sweet smell of honeysuckle would not pervade
The cool north Alabama springtime air
Birds would not gorge on the berries of privet or English ivy
Kudzu would not consume square miles of the countryside
European starlings would not descend upon my lawn en masse

But, despite my wishes, they have
They do
They will

I do my best never to propagate or propone
I educate where and when I can
I pull and chop when given the opportunity
But when I think of the injury I and my own species
Wreak upon the local environment with our daily practices
Our automobiles, our refuse, our pollution
All in the pursuit of comfort and convenience
I have to wonder if my energies
My emotional energies
Are better spent elsewhere

(Draft) Tim Gels May 2020

 

It used to be fun
You saw some pictures
Caught up with a few old friends
(At least I still have my hair)
Found a few good recipes
(Has anyone actually made one of them?)

Now, so much of it comes in just two flavors

Aggressive or
Passive Aggressive

Stir the pot at a low simmer
And watch for the boil

Recently a friend posted pictures of a tree
Well, part of a tree, a very small part
Leaves, emerging from a bud
The same bud, every day
A bud on a sassafras tree
The same tree; the same bud

#phenology, she tagged the images:
The study of cyclic natural phenomena

She started with magnified pictures
As the small action required
Eventually leaving that technique behind
Day by day we watched as her photos
Documented what we saw all around us
Nature’s newness emerging

Frost said, “Nature’s first green is gold”
And, of course, he was right

As a student, I knew what I was watching
A bud, formed the summer before
Covered with scales, holding embryonic leaves
Before that, meristems and apical meristems
Leaf primordia, cell division, growth
An annual process repeated over millennia

Recognizing the science, daily I let it go
Choosing instead to just enjoy the miracle

 

As the air cools in the evening
Coming in from the back yard, it seems
Is never just coming in from the back yard

With the sun cut in half by the trees to the west
One’s coming in from the back yard should be easy:
Point yourself toward the back door and walk

But it’s rarely that simple  

You see the last plants in the garden that need watering
The last weed, missed before, to be plucked from the ground
The wheelbarrow, shovels, and hand tools to be cleaned

The level in the chicken waterer, you notice, is low
And it’s best to take care of that tonight
So it’s not forgotten with the busyness of the morning 

There are so many things to take care of

The hose coiled, the chickens settled
The sun now fully below the tree line and dusk deepening
You stand, one last time, on the porch looking out over the yard

The evening birds are singing their twilight songs
The air is still and distinctly cooler
And you turn toward the house

Reaching for the light switch as you go

When I visit the ocean
I suppose I do it in the conventional way
I start with the drive, heading to the coast
Leaving my home to eventually travel
Past the souvenir shops and the restaurants
Cruising along strip malls with coffee bars and other bars
And the crowds of people, weary and windblown
Walking the sidewalks

Eventually I’ll reach the beach
Hot, bright, and sometimes littered with sand toys
Toys left “for the next family”
I’ll walk with a crunchy shuffle toward the surf
Until my feet finally feel the water
A few steps later and the waves are pushing against my body
And soon I’m in up to my neck
Bobbing up and down as the water undulates around me

And I stop.

What if, though, I could simply start in the middle?  At the bottom?
Somehow submerged despite the laws of nature
Relaxing, strolling the depths
Barely able to see by the dim light that’s made its way down to me
I’ll walk amongst the other aquatic beings
Those both imagined and unimagined, swimming past me
Or scurrying along the ocean floor
Creatures without an uncomfortable chafing problem
The kind you get when you go to the ocean