Monday, March 28, 2016

BOB ARNOLD ~











sweetheart
photo ~ bob arnold








Love and Landscape






Don’t ask us how we crossed the saltwater marsh


Grasses were high and easy under foot


The last stream was spanned by a driftwood plank


Thrown carefully into the muck


I didn’t sink and you didn’t sink


And when we came to ocean


Skittering of sandpipers


You held your dress and walked into the spray


It must have been also the sudden daylight that I loved






What I Hear






This river water is

The warm breath of

Her whisper, what I hear —

The brown and white flurry

Of her thin clothing

The sweat of handwork

That musses the long

Blonde hair — dirt across

The forehead, may I wash

It off? thicken my hands

In that hair, kiss what I love

Away from our work and bathing

Part whisper and part water





Hummingbird



Rarely pausing

Though I have seen

It stop the flutter

Of its amazing

Wings and perch

Nearly invisible

On a wire against

The evening sky —

And be sighted —

And being very

Still, be thought

Of as not there
 





How We Build



It is a day

Of sawing slab wood

Splitting

Then stacking

And be done



Tucking away insulation

Fixing windows

Sharpening every tool



The happy moment

Is there are still

Small grasshoppers

In the slip of meadow

That it is 28 degrees

At 7 this morning

And I wash your hair

In one bucket of

Strong spring water —

There is nothing like it
 

 


 __________________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET