Where birds
listen intently
a garden gate stands amid a plain triganomaly.
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
Note the house the agave Americana lives next to
stands two stories high, its stalk grazing the roof.
After the plant blooms it dies.
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
the oldest living life forms are chaparral
Where birds–
picture intently
a century plant in bloom every 25 years or so.
The way they reproduce, shoot, you can have lots in your yard.
Looking right down into it–its center writ large at night in half light or porch light
reconstructs the universal symbol of being under water or overwhelmed.
The well is dry? (Yes, quite. Thank you.)
The place where the swirl of a Cyclops or cyclone
ends in a maelstrom of some vegetative persona vilified.
Where birds
listen intently
the octopus [what got her] captured her
(listen)
its eye is telling
as much as the tiger’s.
Healthy century plant, the shoot begins:
·growing taller by day,
·a close up of the stalk,
·a hawk resting in the century plant,
·filling out,
·blooming,
·close up of the stamen,
·then a torch-like bloom with a rain mark in the next frame
·the gardener appears,
·the stalk is cut & the body removed.
Next day,
we find the rhizome offstring rosette emerged
while the mother stood dying by behind the casita.
(When?)
That fall when no one came to the casa & the sea lavender when–went
on & on.
You know,
that place where the ocean waves roll ’n furl
& ice plant mounds in pickled firms & flurs
in the sand just there–
A god’s hand
(fibrous)
(mountains and rivers),
how dry it is.
Barbara Cully is the author of two poetry collections from Penguin Books: Desire Reclining (2003) and The New Intimacy (1997) and two collections from Kore Press: Shoreline Series (1997) and That Place Where (2011). A new collection, Under the Hours is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in May 2012 and Cully Selected Poems forthcoming in May 2013.
*Photo courtesy of dugspr.