Periodic poetry posts
Under thin gray clouds diverging down,
galloped colorful horse manes.
Honeycombed,
compacted ravine gravels.
Overnight pelted and rain-washed.
Standing distant on drying Quercus soils,
over sun-comforted knoll.
Grandmother oaks’ home, and you;
Young russet oak. Your noisy leaves,
scarlet dressed like your slim cousin;
your burred uncle bearing the hawk’s nest.
Southwinds blow,
beginning a fallen acorn’s legacy.
palmer haynes
december, 2003
Rusted, still viably green
parked on the edge.
That combine,
Kestrel on the wire,
on the fly too.
A loop track
marks a field drab
dormant,
betrays the vacant space
under a mattress top sky.
palmer haynes
january, 2006
Now your clothes have fallen,
cannot pick them up, put them back.
How do you feel, naked?
What’s it like,
for the next six months?
Do your neighbors cast aspersions,
speak disparagingly of your limbs?
What about those evergreen types?
Do they laugh,
uncontrollably?
Personally, I like the changes.
Fresh wardrobe in the beginning.
Mostly emerald and tall in season.
Colorful costuming before,
your naked scene.
So how will you keep warm?
An inherited trait? Genetically,
your roots must go very deep.
Almanac states, winter will be cold,
really cold.
Pray for hydrating rain. Pull-in
your bark.
Stand close to your neighbor.
Make homes for owl,
and squirrel.
Spring’s really not that far off.
Curious,
what is the Spring fashion forecast?
November, 2005
The Icicle,
roof snow,
ice’s waiting embryo,
birthing water on winter’s warmth.
the icicle,
firmly grips,
drapes the eave, forms erratic stabbing,
has concealed the building you remember.
the icicle,
with full kinetic ice force,
in free fall
can crush to pieces its own clear beauty.
the icicle,
as gravity art,
when carefully plucked, points over,
is plunged into your ceremonial snow bank.
Palmer R. Haynes
9902 Blue Valley Road
Mount Horeb, WI 53572
608 437 4990 plhaynes@mhtc.net Copyright, 2008
Monkshood had begun to bloom
its color unusual for fall, their long stems
waved purple slowly, as railroad wig-wags do,
and, a brisk wind had brought first leaf fall,
spread the deck with a white ash patchwork
my mind’s eye resolved the coverlet to muted greens.
Before my slumber bright sun entered the skylight,
leaf shadows were busily scrubbing the far wall,
upon waking that scrubbed wall still needed work.
Palmer R. Haynes
© September, 2015
Walked with a setting December sun,
forty degrees fair and windless, one last
balmy day, before declared winter.
Roadside Oaks have back brushed sepia crowns,
their clingy foliage refused to fall, our easy
solar blue was measured between the wood.
Sun’s rays crawled in fallow bean stubble,
climbed up the far wood line, ink black
trunks supported more crowning sepias.
The grand finale sits on the West ridge, normally red,
this brassy barn displayed a fleeting South face, and
nearby a farm house window glowed as fine crystal.
Palmer R. Haynes
December, 2018
