More Poems by Alan Wartes

Provocateur

Come closer to know a secret.

The frog you hear at sunset

Telling his story to

Cattails and red-winged blackbirds

In that innocent bicycle-bell voice

Is no mere amphibian,

No more than Mozart

Was merely a primate.

He is a spy, an agent provocateur

Hidden in the muddy grasses.

His mission? To disseminate

Dangerous misinformation,

To sweetly sing there’s more to life

Than malls and mortgages,

More than profit and loss,

More than ever and ever more.

Beware. He will hint each evening

That magic is alive and well,

Glowing on the tips of dragonfly wings

And in the soft feet of possums

On pebbles at the water’s edge.

At noon under gathering cumulonimbus,

He will smile like a Hindu sage

And whisper “Life is good,” in your ear.

                                Last Night’s Dinner Dishes

There is some beauty

In last night’s dinner dishes,

The way the spoons

Recline at the edge of

Soup bowls like women

On porch steps after

The children are asleep.

On a midnight blue salad plate

A smudge of dressing

Looks like the Milky Way.

“You are here, and all is well.”

This crust of buttered bread

Proves the alchemists were right

To believe in transformation,

While empty potato skins

Declare “We are what

We are – no more.”

The last sip of Burgundy

In that crystal glass

Is the color of conversation

And other precious jewels

We mined from deep shafts

Last night around

The noisy table.

                                                The Pulse Under My Fingers

I feel it here, on my belly

In the grass under willows,

Where peppermint stirs

Itself into the darkened

Scent of soil,

The forest’s memory of

Lost summers. I feel it

In the feet of bees

Dancing on the willing flesh

Of blue harebells dipping

Their heads in

Modest surrender, or in

The reckless beetle diving

Over twigs and

Last year’s yarrow stalks,

Oblivious beneath his

Blackened helmet.

It is a pulse under

My searching fingers,

The earthworm who shrugs

As questions too large

Pass through her

Unanswered.

What else could it be

When the flicker

Taps a secret code on

Branches over my head and 

A treasure-filled vault

Opens in my chest?

Not dead and not lost,

As was reported in the

Victor’s history,

Magic is a wide river and

I am a reed

Bending in the current.