Poetry Wednesday

Breathing Patterns

I am growing daisies, tending to them like a cat,
staking everything I own on the small sprouts.
I cannot fathom the WhitePetal creatures
that come so clean from the black earth,
strange moles blind-and-begging for pleasure,
for the touch of the sun.

At night they curl in on themselves,
and drop like eggs into NightWaters
And still
I am Me is She who tends Them,
Learning to breathe here and there like a MotherWhale,
All crusted over with barnacles.

If they live, I think,
they will imprint like geese
on a WhiteMother.
But I am no match for the fish and the serpents.
They steal petals, they gnaw on petals.
Hungry ghosts in the blackblack water.

Annnnnnd, something not-mine that I love:

my love is building a building...(xii)
by e.e. cummings

my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He'll not my tower,
laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
hangs

breathless