Fear, Desire—Feathers that Fly


The slender fingers of the daffodil
signal their come-hither. The rolling green,
the mountains vaguely blue and beckoning a mythic
distance unperturbed by weather. The screen
is a pretense of landscape: Words, numbers keyed
in reflex realities. A daily feed
of systems that summon me to presence
in the network. Sometimes in a clear and present
mind, I elope into the gardens of my own

imagination, where whimsy ferns, where screen gives way
to branches of a pine that stairway
to the blue and clouds departing, sweep aside
the whooing of the thing inside
the thing, downloading—  
The air, though chill, sparkles.
Tiger lilies deepen into dreams.
So many evergreens agree on shade!
One gnarled, twisting, bonsaied by the canopy
and wind, reminds me what a thing
in nature can become, deprived of light,
the mad love of the trees. A bird, death-throated, sings.