Poems and cuteness

Here are a couple of recent poems. The first is about a snail (as a metaphor for finding our the world you've created may not hold after all) and the second is P.'s Valentine's day present--about making strawberry shortcake together in his parents' kitchen before we were married (as a metaphor for the beginnings of a family, and by extension, "worlds without number").

Dangerboy cuteness of the day: pointing at things with his index finger held next to (and extending outward from)his nose. Try it--it can't help but look cute, if I explained it right.

Rainy morning

In that instant of outrageous pressure before you crack,
you consider the wedges like bricks
each larger than the last,
placed firmly in a spiral around your body,
packed with memories like concrete.

And you realize your fortress will not hold;
that each tiny compartment contains
only warm air and filtered sunlight,
and that each wall is not of stone, but of bone;
not even of wood, but of dry leaves. (12/12/06)



Shortcake Genesis

sunlight through the kitchen window, white on the cupboards and scratched linoleum,
I having come to you under a cool late-summer sky
on a day tied up with blue and yellow flowers growing around your parents house,
gathered in a bunch and preserved in the heat of Grandpa’s ’78 pickup

and after the grit of flour on our hands, the spent strength of sticky eggshells, the
creamy white sweetness and red juice of blossoms come to fruit (your eyes like Caleb’s) we blessed our creation of strawberries, cream, and cake (2/13/07)