Wisteria

Coming upon blooming wisteria is to taste Spring and not look back. Then the first aspargus.  Fava beans.  Pea shoots.  And soon, just imagine, peaches.

As delicate as they appear, wisteria are anything but shy of fragrance.  A fragrance-force, for sure.

Later, reading Rilke and slipping into those purple passages.  Perhaps, those scents will rub off -- into the imagination of the next poem written.

Solo

and together.  Rock and liquid.  

One of my must-visits at the JapaneseTea Garden in San Francisco is the solo fish swimming in rock (above).  Then moving toward community, I am always delighted by koi -- liquid wildflowers.  And then just before I leave, I take another glance at the tree on the left whose branches are the arms of a woman waiting to embrace us.  Nature is pure poetry.  Tell me, is it diabolical of me to stop at the fishmongers on the way home to buy salmon for dinner?  

Puya

Once a year, a celebration at the Strybing Arboretum (succulent gardens), in San Francisco Botanical Gardens. Waxy blue/green flowers.
Otherwordly & stately.

A banquet for bees
& others.

Imagine all the poems
tucked in those luscious
pockets.

Bridges

I love kimonos.  

I like bridges.  

Here, summer kimono with iris and eight bridges.  Listen, to these ingredients:  hemp, paste resistent-and stencil-dyed, silk and couched metalic thread embroidery, hemp lining with silk lining at hem and sleeve openings.  

What's couched embroidery?  A technique in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place with small stitches of the same or different yarn.  

I like recipes.

I love poems.  

Each kimono is a poem.  Each recipe is a bridge to a poem.  

Hot

and dried.  Bonnard couldn't have have fashioned these more luscious.    And what hot stories will they share with rice?  What adventures with a page. White paper; white bowl.  And how interesting their name signals the opposite.

Deliberate

Deliberate as dirt.
Deliberate as water
Deliberate as carved stone.
Deliberate as poem on a page.
Deliberate as sauce left at the bottom of plate is another kind of writing.

Thistles

Baby artichokes sliced and sauted with garlic, black olives, pepper, almonds & tossed with sliced Roma tomatoes.  & lots of lemon.  Artichokes make any dish otherwordly.

What makes the poem otherwordly?  A set of prescribed words?   A combination?  The mood of the mouth & ear?  What is the color of an otherwordly poem?

Stars

Before I was born, there were stars. These for example.  Even as a child I know this colander to be a family treasure.  It still is.  Beautiful & useful.  Exacly, what I would like a poem to be. How the ripe depends upon these stars.

& these stars, always present.

Watercolor

Amazing what apps provide.  Photo to watercolor with a click.  Of course, the cat is the magic.  I hope he is imagining my next poem.  I know he's imagining his next meal.

I'm thinking the kinship between words & water -
colors.  You probably are, too.

Kaffir

Kefir with fruit, sharing space with a succulent

Sometimes what you need is no farther than the balcony.  Introducing the kaffir lime (known as Makrut lime).  Notched leaves and tiny fruit.  New leaves are glossy rich brown.  Small spaces are perfect for unlikely neighbors.  Words are small spaces perfect for poems -- unlikely & succulent.

Seeing

depends upon the amount of light allowed in.  

Such is the unexpected.  Such is beauty.  

Of course, light is the sound poems

most desire.  & the taste of Spring asparagus.

Straight

through the heart.  Isn't that an interesting twist of words.   And yet, Spring is just that -- straight
through our hearts, into our hearts.  & we smile.  Just as the soup tantalizes the tongue and delivers joy.  & the poem, you ask?  Straight through the eye & heart.  Or did I mean art?