Words for Trees. Barbara Folkart

hand. Perfumed

      and ready in the silk that whispers

       lasciviously along your long white body,

       you dream him in the earth colours of his flesh—

      eyes lips nipples engorgement—the tendrils

       in your own groin growing damp, your breasts dewy

       with sandalwood, and that other dew

      forming in you already. And you wait

       by the elegant, the implacable black door

       through which he will come to claim you,

      needing his touch to unspell you

       from the vegetative rhythms of desire, release

       you into the June day raging in the garden.

Nana and Trick

      (after Edouard Manet)

      In his evening dress,

       he’s the dark

       of the painting,

       the sombre, light-absorbing foil

       for Nana’s luminous undress.

       Propertied, he appraises her,

       eyes level with her rump. Cocks

       his cane, his cardiac stare

       on the opulent flesh blooming

       below her strangled waist-

      One flick of the cane,his hand is thinking…

      She’s paying no attention.

       Why would she, with all that light

       spilling out of her?

       Preening in her blue corset

       cinched tight tight

       to celebrate her breasts and hips,

       she’s all abundance—

       auburn hair fleshy-milky arms

       rice-powdered cheeks—

       all embonpoint and petulant flesh.

      What does she care about his lack,

       this man of property, who only owns?

II

       Time Passing Through Gardens and Fields

My Son Opening a Watermelon

      Just one small stab,

       he explains,

       and the mesh of tiny forces

       comes unwebbed,

       the crisscross of tensions and counter-

       tensions sunders and surrenders,

       splits open

       on the harsh pink succulence inside.

      Domes, shells, eggs—

       all that enclose

       at some point must give

       way, I think,

       yield to the bump on the hatchling’s beak,

       to September’s seed-splitting warmth,

       to rot, rain, or gravity,

       to time,

      to having served their purpose.

June

      Undeserved stars (this restaurant’s overrated),

       insipid food, the Mâcon blanc served warm.

       Our suitcases have been defenestrated:

      like snow in May, nighties and knickers swarm,

       shimmer and sift and dream their soft way downward

      au ralenti, to gravity’s quiet charm.

      June’s inconsolable: my works of art! We keen the strident oranges and yellows, the metaphors her talent could extort

      from mindless matter. Does it really follow

       that colour’s the prime mover of our moods,

       fuchsia and green the stuff of highs and lows?

      It’s spring. I see a feathering of blood,

       and envy June the talent still inside.

Bodies of Rain

      Rains and rains

       set the greens to swelling

       at the tips of the blue spruce,

       shingling down from the summit

       of the crabapples—green over rose

       over green—frothing

       along the raw new edges

       of the hemlock.

      Tulip and iris blades glint

       with the runoff sluiced

       off new-leafed maples.

       Under a trillion tiny impacts

       May begins.

      Rains and rains

       blow the oceans

       through my windows.

       From half a continent away,

       through the last of May,

       the heavy maturity of trees and grasses,

       comes the salt green air—

      bodies of far-off water,

       their earthy smell.

Time Passing Through Gardens and Fields

      May ending, and already

       the tulips have lost their bright labia.

       Summer settles in, extinguishing

       lilacs and fruit trees:

       June, and then July.

      August burns with the blood-

       orange blaze of tiger lilies.

       The fields fill with cicadas,

       turn rose, turn apricot,

      singing up at me as the sun sets,