Author / John

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Posts by John

A very old curmudgeon for whom home is a distant memory.
by John

Red Tomato

I can say only what I saw:

A migrant, black, dust-laden,

With a basket in the store.

He’d picked out bread

Then looked at the tomatoes

Ripe, plump and red.

He didn’t take the freshest

From the stack, but reached

Behind the juiciest to the back

For the tomato with a blemish,

A spot of rot where once

A splinter in the wooden box

Had snagged its silk smooth skin.

He turned it over in his hand,

Squeezing gently, then placed it

In his basket with the bread


I watched him at the counter

When his turn came round.

Pointing to the tomato,

As if it were a treasure found,

He asked, “How much?”

The cashier set it on a scale.

“43 cents,” she said, “on sale.”

The laborer checked his change,

Shook his head and mumbled

He’d just take the bread.

I saw him leave the store

With only half-a-loaf

And watched the red tomato

As it was tossed into the trash.

by John

Among the Trees

In the style of Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees
especially the acacia and mesquite,
the cottonwood and willow,
in the bosque beside the desert wash,
silently welcomed home –
a family member after a long absence,
shedding the fictions of my other self,
the painfully sustained deceit…
It has been so long, though only yesterday:
Home again with these old friends,
sharing their breathing space,
standing in the intensity of the moment
beside the softly bending winter grass
under the welcoming arms
of gnarled old branches that reach out
in a gesture of embrace.
Words take flight like the startled hawk
flycatcher, finch, or sparrow,
alarmed at my footfall,
who flutter away leaving a silence
where the giant granite boulder lies,
unmoved for a hundred years or more
since tumbling down the mountainside
to settle in among the agave and saguaro
for me to lean on, rooted as we are
in this place.

by John

Singing in the dark

On an icy January morning, during my daily pre-dawn walk to the gym, I heard a cardinal singing from high in the branches of a leafless tree. “That’s strange,” I thought. “Spring is still a long way off in Ohio.” This morning, the same cardinal sits singing in that same tree more than two months later as I walk past at 5:30 am. I’m reminded of the mockingbird that would sing through the night in a tree outside our window in Southern Arizona.

Cardinals were known as Virginia Nightingales in eighteenth-century England or Winter Redbirds because of their stark red contrast against white winter snow. Then, and now, they have had a variety of symbolic meanings, have been named state bird in seven US states, and serve as mascots for many sports teams. For me, the bird conveys the sense of a solitary observer, patiently waiting.

I

by John

Confucian Poets Never Knew

 

 

Confucian poets

never knew the

gentle jacaranda

never basked

in the amethyst shade

of its springtime

branches

never sang of its

fragrant blossoms

soft as mulberry silk

floating in the breeze

never tried to capture

its illusive hue                                    

purple gently poised               

somewhere between               

violet and magenta                             

not quite blue.

by John

You Should Sit Under A Jacaranda

You should sit
under a jacaranda tree
in late spring
when dappled light
dances on bare arms
and the violet mantilla
draped loosely overhead
ripples softly in the breeze
shaking off spent blossoms
that float down
covering the earth
in a miracle sprinkling 
like spring-time snow             
indigo-tinged flakes
bathed in hues of twilight blue
flowers even as they die
holding us in their clasp
pungent as damp moss
and sweetly fragrant
sweet as honey from the bees
that in the lattice lace overhead
still buzz vibrato
their universal hum.
In this place where you sit
suspended between effulgence and decay
patiently between birth and death
there is for this moment
no space for fear regret or pain

by John

Daybreak in December

Many mornings are the same:  A hint of light behind the black silhouette of the Catalinas and, higher, Venus suspended brightly in the dark clear sky just before daybreak.  But some mornings are different this December.  One morning the sky behind the still dark mountains seemed cloudless but in the half-light before sunrise it glowed with an almost fluorescent sheen, an amalgam of silver, salmon, champagne and light lavender, suggesting the thin transparent veil of cirrostratus cloud.  There are also the few times altocumulus clouds make their appearance like ploughed fields rippling across the sky, glowing orange, red and pink at sunrise.  This month we had storms rolling in from California.  They brought lenticular clouds, wave crests stacked one upon the other, breaking over the mountain peaks. One morning I was up a little earlier than usual; just after 5:00am.  Standing in the driveway where I had just picked up the morning paper I looked out across the dark sky enjoying the morning stillness before the start of another day, when a meteor, suddenly appeared, tracing a long arc down towards the north-west horizon:  One of the Geminids no doubt, offspring of the 3200 Phaethon Comet but, for me, a shooting star, a spark of the divine.

by John

A Meeting

I once asked our nine-year-old granddaughter what she most liked about her visits to Tucson. She replied unhesitatingly that it was the night she, Lil and I sat cuddled together under a blanket on the back patio and watched the moon rise over the Catalina mountains. It was dark and cold. We sat looking into the blackness until a faint profile of the mountains slowly started to appear, and then a silvery glow began to emerge behind Mount Lemon. It grew brighter and brighter until the silver flash of the upmost curve of the moon exploded over the peak of the mountains. We watched in silent awe as the moon rose into the sky in its full splendor.

And I remember the poem written by my Aunt, Katherine Woodman

IS THIS WHERE WE MEET

Is this where we meet, John Moon
In a frozen night when old snows
Thinly cover the brown land?
Our glances flit through fir trees,
Tall bare trunks; you brush my cheek
Reaching lightly over my shoulder,
Then swing around in the sky
Till we meet face flooding face.
So we ride through the night, John Moon,
Finding no particular reason
For such unexpected mating
In this cold season.