Two Poems

Green Thaumaturge

In the forest, a divulged tire
Has filled with fuchsia-colored snakes.

They appear radioactive, or maybe fed
With the blood of Redondo evenings.

Nearby a hunter traps a hare
In a small cage. He’s perplexed

To find its made of glass, or maybe ice
Sculpted from the remaindered slags of Pangea.

When you hear a rustle
You start looking for the flash

Of birds hoboing from limb
To limb.

What you find instead is a
Rapture-colored eye peering

At you through the leaves.
Over the landscape clouds of white butterflies

Descend like omens.
You practice transfiguring

Their bodies into snow,
Accidently creating winter

In the fire-petaled air.

Stones

In the thicket of night-blooming jasmine
A man who is an emissary of the moon
Gathers up golden pieces.
They are the remains of an old god,
Maybe goddess, shattered overhead
On a night dark as cinder rock,
A night so long ago
The inhabitants of myth
Call it myth.
Back in the world, no one believes
In the glittering stones.
They proclaim their silver veins
Full of fraudulence,
Throw them into the street
And slam the door behind him.
He carries the pieces with him
All his life, dropping them
Here and there on his journey
Across the continents.
Each one roots into the soil
Like a dimmed-down lantern.
When he dies they suddenly blossom,
Overturning the earth with their
Massive, shining trees.