Author: Kay Foley

Tumble and bumble 
jumble dee doo
I saw a frog
with only one shoe.
 
Believe me or leave me
my wickedest friend
I see a sky that’s
blue without end.
 
Rambling and clambering
in the gnarly old woods
I’ll show you birds
in jackets with hoods.
 
And evermore forevermore
the leaves will keep falling
and I’ll go out walking
while your name I’m calling.

I took ninety-seven photos in the woods today
believing I might somehow capture what delights me.
Morning sun casting a spotlight on a stem of leaves.
Fat drops of dew hanging on.
River oats now brown symmetrical windblown.
Red vine making its way through the green.
Creek reflecting the colors on the bluff.
Pawpaws paling, great long leaves umbrellad over my head.
But my photos do not enchant like their subjects do.  
They disappoint me after all.
Too much is lost in my simple camera
and that is quite all right as I do have
these two legs to get me back
and these two eyes to feast upon All.

A single yellow leaf lets go the redbud branch
where it was born and has lived happily 
(I can only assume) since May.
Now tumbling loose and languorous 
touching as it falls this branch that leaf
a few of the neighbors it has only ever 
waved at from above.  Until this very day.
What happens next is an unknown
involving the eventual slow return to
another form, a new richness.

 

This still morning fits my mood as
my life feels paused somehow placed on hold
not by the finger of God or any angel good or evil
but by my own reluctance to change 
one whit
of what
has felt to me a perfect balance.
The petals of this flower have 
uncurled to a round fullness
drinking up the sun and rain
finding this patch of earth 
so loamy and rich as to promise 
ever more and grander
blooms to come.

Fields of browned corn stalks rustle (I imagine) as I speed by in my car.
Sunflowers crowd along these country roadsides as if watching
some kind of parade: me going by in my car.  A very short parade.
Bean fields yellow too and pale green, the beans long ago picked
and simmered in a pot with a piece of bacon, onion, salt and pepper.
It is early fall and some One must have decided long ago 
that a palette of yellow green and brown would be just the thing
on this Nebraska landscape in late September.
Against a brilliant blue sky contentment has picked up its brush.

The sentinel node is clear.
Strange words that are, however,
happy, joyful ones to my ear.
All clear for take-off.
Clear as a bell.  A bell sounds
a time to celebrate
to re-imagine a life
to worry less, celebrate more
to be one who is elated
knowing that the wearing of hats
will be just because. Only and just.
I shall take cake to her house.

I.

A black cloud is lifted 
this time around and I
vow quietly to hold my
friend more closely
more gently
more reverently.
 
II.
A short talk in a long line with a woman I do not know
revealing the difficulties of her life:
the negative husband, the elderly mother.
We had a heart-to-heart just like that
and now she is dear to me, though I do not
have her name.  I am thankful once again
for the many gifts of my life.

Another hotel and nice enough.
I detect no funny smell.
No offending spots on the carpet.
I do not hear my neighbors through the walls.
The pictures are even lovely.
But the pillows are bad.
The pillows are quite bad.
Therefore All is ruined.
I wake again and again in the night
punch the pillow fruitlessly.
In the morning my neck aches.
Oh the pillows are quite bad.
 
I think fondly of sharing my pillow
at home with Miles of the curly black 
hair and the long eyelashes.
Miles Louis, who showers my face
with kisses upon waking.
My darling Miles. 
The over-sized miniature poodle.
I will be home in two more days.
He cannot know that
but I do.

Write me a story
one with an adventure and a bear
a forest the sea a mountain
a tale about the bravery of bees
the audacity of women strong
of limb wild of hair bare-breasted
hearts pumping fiercely
ever on and anon.
Long pithy passages of 
flood fire calamity great love 
leading finally to the heartbreaking 
conclusion every human seeks 
the one that cannot be 
told in words.

Suddenly appearing now in the dewy meadows are 
tightly woven spider’s webs stretched across the grass
in thick white patches to make tiny sparkly circus tents
for whomever frolics beneath.  At least, that is,
they appear to be spider’s webs though I never see
a spider and cannot guess who or why only now
in autumn and why smack out on top of the grass where
any old body might come walking along and wreck 
them pouf in an instant!  I do like that I only see them 
of a morning in the fall, that they appear now and only now 
and I, loving of presents and gifts, may receive them 
only now, as if it might be Christmas or my birthday and I 
do like that they are short-lived and you have 
to be of a certain type in order to notice them
which makes them, like the wildflowers, special,
as well as the one who notices.