Tempering the Beds
Presence of emergent aquatics,
that is the becoming present,
that is the becoming being,
endows ecosystem,
heaves happy cattails,
with architecture.
That is the becoming being
endows aperture for water,
happy for birds, luscious
for the swatted from embedded bushes:
In water lusty laughter floats above.
Then aperture for temperature
is cut above and growing for this partner
beyond realms of mowing barter,
to fish and birds and pike
and bogbean and all to tiny whaling lovers
the better other in becoming.
Then let emergent aquatics
dam and dim the pressures
rounded into thirstless breasting
of emulcifent, twanged architecture,
other layer of other loving’s pasture:
Let all round moving
on the limning endowed blow faster.
Fearful Mangers
These different low coverings
moss pinks and so on
or goldenrods glowing and glimmering
redpolls allaying the fields
not how to attract the northernmost
who build nests in sponge
with protective linings before the roll.
These fragrant criers of avoidant
paleness tucked in petals
the soapwort and its dangers
not surprising how face the lot.
Elegance again in encounters
slippery to hold cinquefoil not
lowly not rare in mountainous pockets
but it congregates blandly for those herds
and those go-arounds of survival.
Stamp wisely for the niche
that becomes cornered spider beetle
or sand lance on terms
that have never been bitten
as of a thriving population
it reverts and passes or quite
or timed quietism unfurling.
The Quaking Bog
From bitterns against clean tables
to sway of trees the variable
unpatterning decreasing dips
pin shelter to enter loss
left with bounding of the white cedar.
Good and gracious was the gift
of clay now narrower the light
surfaces in grains for insect
in crawling in slowest wave of silts.
It were variously unknown
the depth trotted thickly a seeding
ran to undo sparsity
the hilts of reply to sour sun
within which twitter and snail
fled a weakly wrapt quilt.
The nails of the catchment figure
quick what sunlight begs to differ
of ice and crash of ice cupped.
—by Robert Mueller
Copyright© 2021, Robert Mueller. All Rights Reserved.
Since completion of his formal studies in comparative literature at Brown University, Robert Mueller has experimented copiously in the writing of interpretive essays, critical articles and poetry reviews. Chief among his subjects are the poets Edmund Spenser and Barbara Guest, and in Jacket2 the poetry of Eleni Sikelianos and Sharon Dolin. Robert Mueller’s poetry appears recently in Home Planet News Online. From the past of particular interest are poems in Blackbox Manifold and Mad Hatters’ Review.