"Our hearts are trim"

Essays into poetry:

Let me fill this pot --
Roots thickening, moist, whitish flesh--
Then move me, make me face
The shock of Transplant
Then grow again--
Moderating my sun,
Spritzing my leaves.
Master Gardener:
Prune me, let me thrive;
Tend me, let me live.

Star-gazing
Warm hood--
Watching the darkness:
Bright foreigners
Stare back.


The leaves bleed out their chlorophyllic green
Flutter to the ground in gold, parchment-brown litter--
The old strews the stable for the new, mulch and fruit
Somehow-- Something grows underneath
Pressing the earth. Maybe that's it:
The leaf leaps precipitous from the branch to meet it.
The arbor lifts and sun shines direct into the nest
For a short time.

I think it was Ted Kooser in his Poetry Home Repair Manual who defined poetry as words with funny line breaks. I'd like to discipline my lines more. But since these are not assignments, I'm not squeezing my brain to push the words around. (And when you are doing it for an assigment, editing a poem does feel like some giant hand is mashing your brain like a sponge.) But with the last poem, some the sounds seem to have fallen into complimentary positions.
I've been reading so much Emily Dickinson lately that looking at the pages of spare stanzas,
The words flagged with capitals
-- Isolated by dashes--
The scrabble bag inside of me shakes--
The words, longing, press,
Flap against my chest,
Fling themselves to wing
Confused from my throat:
Leap to answer
Her words with mine.

I've suddenly begun to appreciate her more fully and I'm devouring her poems quickly, where reading just five at a time was a chore.

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