Eclipse

There rose the generous belly of the moon,
apricot blushed, a baked soufflé,
only to hide then, shy of the gaze of humans,
later reappearing up high,
so white, luminous, cold,
in full radiance of her youth,
casting sharp, deep, clear-cut shadows,
bathing the universe in her quier luster,
thus making the street lights,
stiff on their stems,
look like faded flowers.

A Capella

One night as I stepped out to listen to the wind,
I first heard its rustle entering the dance floor and courting the trees,
then the fluttering of the leaves, responding to the soft murmur of their lover,
when Zephyr whirls here, whirls there,
and the occasional Swish! of a young tree
- you could almost hear laughing-
But the star of the show that night was the tinkling duet of my windchime on its balcony
and the neighbor's in the corner house.
Mine tinkled with a feminine voice, a delicate, soft spoken jingle,
thairs a deeper, lower, masculine tone, chiming in echo to mine,
and a whole converstation wnt back and forth,
the chime echoing the tickling of his Dulcinea,
and that was all I could hear then, this courting scene of two lovers,
living accross the street from each other.
After a while, the A cappella duet grew so loud, insistant, that it permeated evrything,
and as this canon for two voices intensified,
as the wind accelerated its dervish whirl,
so there it sounded like a thousand chimes in a Tibetan temple garden.

The Temple

In the center of the clearing in the park there is a temple,
guarded by a circle of high rise Fir pillars,
their arms dressed up with long drooping sleeves,
here and there glistening with prisms of dew drops as the sun pierces through,
and the Firs crane their long necks, all bending towards the center of the clearing
in a concave reverence to what mysterious power?
The sleeves of their long magician robes,
long strips of fabric randomly cut through by invisible scissors,
leave a narrow passage for streaks of soft opalescent sunrays
that brushes leaves with splashes of transluscent green and covers the top with silver varnish.
Right in the heart of that straight sheet of light,
a cloud of golden bugs dance, in small groups or in couples,
tirelessly drawing eights in the air.
An Arbutus tree stands in the shade,
with its cracked, peeling saffron skin lit by the sun, turning it into an incandescent tree of life.
And as I crane my neck up, I have to surrender, and lie down.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are out in my backyard. I wanted them for color, and planted many.
In a matter of a few days they grew big and multiplied.
I like their color palette and their oversized leaves that shelter blooms like Japanese umbrellas,
under which, here and there,
two or three flowers display their silky kimonos in a debauchery of warm tones.
Honey, lemony yellow butterfly wings,
the brightest orange, no doubt a few drops of the Eastern sun bleeding,
Blood orange, sprouting, no doubt from the entrails of the earth,
where the magma is simmering a glowing, sticky stew
waiting to remind us of our impermanence.
All shades of saffron, like the neat conic mounds of spices
artfully displayed in a Morrocan market stall,
glowing like mounds of powdered gems in a dark, narrow, medina cobbled street.
Like the robes of Buddhist monks in a dimly lit temple,
And rust, the peculiar texture of metal turning back into powder,
going back to the earth it was extracted from.
We'll get rusty too, and when we get tired of our futile combat against our nature,
we'll curl up and wrinkle and dry out and be reduced to a powder,
just in time to go back to our mother, beneath our feet,
who, in her unconditionnal, loving wisdom, will blend ud with a savant mixture
of earth, minerals, syrup, water, and fire,
to revive us, pushing us back up as a nastutium flower.

Mother of pearl

Somewhere in the confines of the universe,

a mysterious arm feels pity for the darkness we're immersed in,

and in a slow, graceful sweeping movement,

pushes away the shirt tail of the clouds,

so we can catch a glimpse of the shy maiden moon.

As the mysterious ballerina dances around the pearly sphere,

the veils every now and then are pulled close and cover her feminine roundness.

But the queen of the night, in her infinite generosity,

dances her adagio around the pale globe,

softly coaxing her into letting her face shine to the Earth,

and as the demoiselle is ready, the queen stretches out a swanlike finger,

and turns the light on,

and the mother of pearl, rivalling the million sparkling gems around her,

at last offers her opalescent glow, pulling us out of the darkness.