Category: Ronald Johnson

emerald, the front porch swing

down yellowbrick road

sun orange beyond the barn

—Tornado Rose—

beings stept forth in geode amethyst,

nor atom blue of dust lost

pyre, eyrie

From here, barred owls ladder winter sun’s

resounding arroyos’

“earths of different colours, as blue, a kind of crimson,

grass-green, shining black, chalkwhite, and ochre”

against

Montagnes de Pierres Brillantes,

now Rockies.

Or there, a stand of scarlet sumac (with bobolink

sphericling the hereabouts

lit with a fine straw-colored light like the spirits of trees

—some Appalachia for backdrop)

drinks in all green wide summer

to a berry.

Off the porch I see twelve miles into the sunflower patch.

High noon stands still as a just-picked apple.

prairie, prairie

These are The Foundations.

that this is paradise,

odd words in legion

beating around the veritable bush

years shape and illuminate:

when the great cats purr

so closely woven,

when sparrows hedge fled field

one sounding cloud,

when down the wild wind ride

Galapagos, archipelago!

eagle dodge eagle

and tigers scatter cage

according to their lights,

burn each thy word

to crowd at last on life in full

—the elder the earth—

Sky Line Blvd.

uphill all the way

never were there such roses

under the banner of summer,

never such

beautiful hullabaloo

hello down well, clap upper cloud

passed muster

to stay the spell,

never this horse of another color

on such goldened a road

find voice,

invent interior face

(I mount to save my very hide)

raised all likeness

kindled, not knuckled under

as one seize it

—howe’er humbly cobbled an order,

a universe sprung free—

probeable as possible

be, but bear

at most the least belief

proud sprout pry ancient any brain

again gain again

intimate unto the inanimate

tossed world

lilac, winedark

sun-gold in chopped scarlet

starred

equilateral equangular quinquangles

(like to those balls stitched twelve patchwork of color

skiey Okeanos

clouds like loud chords

—whose contours their contours pun—

out of a drop of water-that-does-not-wet-the-hand

become a blue mirrored ball on emerald lawn

(with dandelions for

miles)