Putting Up Corn
An unknown song crept in
when the corn died
swept up in his arms
like a telluric life.
The ridge is gone and splattered
like a molten dusk
seeds planted for
the birthplace
of every planet.
The corn became a kitchen
and our knives became a bridge
to the lenient, cellular sun
atoms of unusual stars.
His beard grew thicker
stiff, like a gel
and the Bayon pigeon’s release
lost in the Wabash reeds.
We tried to put up corn
in the road, in the highway
in every sphere
of beautiful battering eyes.
I Need You
Like the tapering of trees
when grass flowers in the Spring.
Yellow paint dries into ochre
in the ridge of cobalt-blue
that colourful feeling
as green fades into a mist.
The starfish flows on electric eels
in the old mime of the streets.
I need you as the path is made new
the early leaves wet at our feet.
I need you as our minds are made circular
all over again.
I need you as the pollen
clings to the light air—
as pollen is air
and blue seas become the sky,
when all eyes have become one
and engines have made themselves right.
The Blue Light
Will drain the autumn of its hills
It’s fullness lingering—
the brown oak storms
a vortex like grainy salt
vertical like steel
the blue unblinking.
The crimson red touches Delmar
and the blue—this flat tenor
of time unending…
For Me to Come Back
The new leaves sputter and dry
on the land, and I melt like wax
waiting for your eyes with all
the chastity of my life.
Loving you in some moonlight
between the new moon and the full.
Our ancestors rise in your blood.
You get lost in my dreams of the sea
and the mango branches of my eyes.
The sea washes every floor trembling
as the boat’s keel aligns with the body’s heat.
We meet in the last month of Spring
the Ohio River oozing from your eyes
for me to come back.
Even now the night will never pass
the string of flowers, parting my hair
my world overwhelmed with you:
my body’s aching Monarch
covered in silence and in dew.
Every Leafless Branch
Is floating in your eyes
facing the tree…
your legs saturated with salt
trembling with the veins of your eyes.
The beachless canyons
of your legs console—
every sorrow turns to silk
when your colours
fall from the sky
where blue herons
are flying in your eyes.
Your legs become a
blockade to the wind
an abstraction to the hand
and we are companions
in God’s aching lull.
Laura Eklund is a poet and artist living and working in Kentucky. She is married to the poet George Eklund. She lives with George, their eight cats, and four children. She has previously published three books of poetry. Her website is http://www.lauraeklund.org
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