Poetry by Crawdad Nelson
Glass Cat by Myles Boisen |
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Love Sequence
by Crawdad Nelson Wind is constant at Cape Mendocino: they can't stand to look up we're two hours early, in Ferndale, pretending not to care about the tide up Wildcat rusted logging tackle swings in a tree: gusts and sustained winds down the grade the cows with heads lowered like rudders. they seem quite still, but move by the time the road elbows the bright afternoon sun coming into Shelter Cove it rained so hard the cows were sailing north like butterflies and for some reason I pulled over Put my tongue on a raw limpet: salt, rubber a container vessel making good time somewhere out there the land bends and there are only simple waves everywhere referring mainly to the named and paved roads where people make up their minds and die we were in a coffee shop reading books we were on the edge of the west, looking down, the sea rolling backward into sun coming into Bear Harbor on foot with a canteen banging down the trail at night, with a red jug. Among the Redwoods and the Laurels by Crawdad Nelson A sweet word. Enough of things. Two black-tip swans among the somnolent overhead string of geese, ungloved hands fashioning arches blue groins of clay where couples sit, concocting libations, unbuttoning themselves, like the maples in the rocks above the creek: bare-skinned, scrawl of limb and trunk I apply the paint, we eat, the sea tides upward seething having washed all tint from within. The fungus represents eternity depending from a limb above the creek, bent, armlike left behind. Finally, inside, seated, I contrive to see forever our the open door, even distant stars hardly slow my ascent toward the blue currents the limpid riffles, the detailed ways of waves, crossed on the bay, seen from above. Above it are birds like cyclonic flecks of ash, a twist. Above the sun as robins break the land, surveyed and protected, a flicked wing between hoisted trunks,, soft above, hard below, and planted where the tender mammal sleeps within the hand the wind alone is a flame, rain swells the roofboards like a hand slipped into pants. We came for this, and having found it, we are prime. I Get The Impression The World Is Made Of Roses by Crawdad Nelson Nothing but petals as deep as you go nothing but almost immediate decay— sweet-smelling, soft on the fingers, climbing the walls and falling in long extravagant washes of rose-bloom over fences, envining bare boards and settling, peaceful, rampant, enlightening, compassionate, careful, partially restless, more than a handful over rusted nailheads, onto the locked gate. Roses! Flowers and thorns! Broken stems! A bustling rapture of dew-set buds! Nodding in ecumenical frenzies! Passions in loose exuberant landscapes! Free as rain— you can wall them out but you can’t stop a single bloom, can’t even delay them: crushing bouquets, the multiplication, the reproduction, the endless repetitive sweep and sway! Tie them down, they only strain through the wires and unpin the stakes! They liberate! They step out of line! They grow in all directions, to the light, unexpectedly verdant, unpredictably vain. Joyous and splendidly narcissistic! Disestablished, reaching out of the ground with courage and beauty, seeking the sun, a racket of color! Flowing, spilling, spreading over manures and pathways— onto the benign, hopeless, horizontal mesh of trails— limp in cool mornings! Deeply circumstantial! Decidedly loose! Prolific! Profligate! Righteous! slatternly, sluttish, promiscuous! Living twice: Once in the garden, once in the collection— I get the impression the world is constructed Entirely of roses! (from the collection Big Drink)  Crawdad Nelson, Photo by Lori Blair Crawdad Nelson arrived in Sacramento on a bicycle in 2003. Since then he has been a student at Sacramento City College, winning journalism and other awards, and a freelance contributor to the Sacramento News & Review, Softball West, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and online journals. His poetry has appeared in online and print publications and his latest collection of poems, Big Drink (24th Street Irregular Press, 2009) is available from the author. |
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