White

by Ed Jones

New Year has arrived white.  No snow.
Just the brilliance of sun on beech and clapboard,
The freckles of leaves against lawns gone somber,
A smear of cirrus, the shafts of slant rays
That stripe my room.  How all things

Any other day would just be cold, shorn, naked,
But today arrive not antiseptic or pure
Or gossamer light or blinding.  Just something
You can work with when the ground stays hard
Against your boots and you want warmer gloves.

Like this page, a welcome mat for arranged darkness,
The shadows of beeches thrown down among
Last year’s leavings.
Like a welder, you avert your eyes
And the bead of light leaves a whole thing.

It’s just the white has washed smooth across
A whole field of grass and you’re left
Knowing how it would be to walk, light
As a silken skein of milkweed
Up this trail just beyond the hill’s curve
Where it climbs up into the fleecy sky.

Morning Light

by Ed Jones

Once, I said Pine has fingers but I was wrong.
Each arm has one hundred green fans performing
Japanese rituals.  Everything effortlessly coordinated
By Wind.  The great arms of the pine bow and beckon,
And the fans attend every movement, solicitous as
Geisha without the encumbrance of arousal.

Now this morning light is so pure
Nothing gets in the way of gray shingles,
Jade trim, cornice and shadow, the curl of
Sycamore leaves hanging thick as dried figs
In a skittering of branches.  Even the dog’s bark
Is transparent in this early light:  good morning.

Wind commands pine fans to tickle air
With their fingers!  Look, there, I was not wrong.
Such is the power of the grand choreographer today,
Transforming fans to fingers and back again.

And light still falls evenly on everything
Even as shadows climb down the roof, two leaves
Twitch in the wind, and the fans either spread
Or do not spread their fingers attending to the world.

Cousins

by Ed Jones

My inebriate cousins the mosquitos
Have whined and probed and sucked
All night long, leaving us swatting
At them even in our dreams and now
Fleeing before the sun they return
Besotted with blood, slippery
With intercourse, desiring only
Some tireful of musty rain water
To lay themselves down,
A scene burgeoning with vast sexual
Activity, a flotilla of filmy eggs.
And already they are asleep, no
Hangover, simply content in an
Exhaustion soon perfected in death
Which means nothing to them.
In three days their myriad corpses
Return as home:  bacterial nest,
Swamp grass, algal bloom.  We hate
Such thoughtless prolixity, don't we,
We Mayflower descendants, disturbed
By all that blindly plunges or
Prefers night to day or remorselessly
Dreamlessly does what it wants,
What it needs, what it must.