It is possible

that you are the frame, thin and dark around the edges

and most would say you are not the mat, stark, plain,

except you do have a talent for aiming the eye towards

what is significant;

most people would say you are most definitely

the leaves that sway from tender stalks, suspended

in a westbound wind, red hair going green and gold

in becoming;

I, cannot imagine you

as a broken silver egg, but imagine you might see

yourself a casement for the winged wonder plucked

by the beak of an ancient mariner, its eyes open

to shifting sands;

an invisible potion inside a beaker is what you are though,

not the beaker but the liquid inside, and is, is what fills

a painting with maybe, pure research, suspended

feather, stirring each of us to belief.

---for Carol Peters

love, mary

10/10

what Kermit doesn’t say to the taxi driver on the way to the Met

this is for my friend Roddy from the SC BookFestival who reminded me how much he liked this poem--thanks Roddy




it’s not easy being
green, to always wear
the same outfit and yet
never quite fit in,

a greenhorn in a world
of know-it-all puppets
left with all the jobs
no one else wants,

one could so easily
turn into a green-eyed
monster that envies
all the rest

for parts more loved
than any held
by a swamp-singing
baritone on a lily pad,

even a greenstick fracture
could be so easily gotten
from slapstick falling
but gets no sympathy,

only a laugh
here and there, perhaps
for a common
green frog

trying to make a few
greenbacks, to put
a new bowtie on
his neck, just once

a private reading

when the words drip from your lips,
I want to be standing under your chin,
open-mouthed, tongue to tongue,
feel the tips rub up against each other,
not like the grit of a cat’s tongue,
whose relentless sandpaper licking
scrapes a surface smooth, but ridge to ridge,
pulled to attention as if each notch intentionally
takes its time to find how best to fit
the grooves of sound together,
your bitter to my sweet, like tears of honey
slowly sliding through a maze of maybes
until a yes drops onto a rough patch
and a nipple of amber, heated
by the wings in your throat warms
the quivering of mine to a murmur
around the silent spaces, and then I want
to swallow you, lips and tongue and breath
from a fog that lies along a ridgeline at dawn,
to set my earlobes on fire, my cheeks to red coals,
my eyes to yours to beg for another taste