It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,

And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry

There is more unmixed color on the wing

Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:

And now from having ridden out desire

They lie closed over in the wind and cling

Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Like crawling black monsters

the big clouds tap at my window,

their shooting liquid fingers slide

over the staring panes

and merge on the red wall.

Some of the fingers pull at the hinges

and whisper insistently: “Let us come in,

the cruel wind whips and drives us

till we are sore and in despair.”

But I cannot harbor the big crawling black clouds,

I cannot save them from the angry wind.

In a tiny crevice of my aching heart

there is a big storm brewing

and loud clamour and constant prayer

for the reflection of snow-capped mountains

on a distant lake.

Tires and dazed I sit on a bear skin

and timidly listen to the concert of storms.

The mist has left the greening plain, 

The dew-drops shine like fairy rain, 

The coquette rose awakes again 

     Her lovely self adorning. 

 
The Wind is hiding in the trees, 

A sighing, soothing, laughing tease, 

Until the rose says “kiss me, please”

    ’Tis morning, ’tis morning. 

 
With staff in hand and careless-free, 

The wanderer fares right jauntily, 

For towns and houses are, thinks he, 

   For scorning, for scorning,


My soul is swift upon the wing, 

And in its deeps a song I bring; 

come, Love, and we together sing, 

“’Tis morning, ’tis morning.”

                             David Teng Olsen, Mural, 2017

 

At sunset, this October,

            I picked some Nippon daisies, 

the last flower to flower,

            a verb named for its noun.

 

The weather was all indoors.

            A Page solo plus Michelangelo 

enameled in cerulean, tangles

            of what looked like instant ramen,

 

a heavy barge in the surf offshore,

            a spindly zeppelin down, the scene 

split by an architectural birch

            crisscrossed by laser blasts.

 

Dave added the sky one day,

            then blew our heads apart

by denying it had ever been a sky.

            A spider creature was our sons.

 

Their hair entangled meant

            they would now never be apart,

not their whole lives wandering

            in a world itself worryingly

 

wandering who knows where.

            Look, there’s a friendly bloom; 

Look, a vivisectionist, a severed wrist. 

            These thoughts our house had had about us.

I found you and I lost you, 

   All on a gleaming day. 

The day was filled with sunshine,

   And the land was full of May. 

A golden bird was singing

   Its melody divine, 

I found you and I loved you, 

   And all the world was mine. 

I found you and I lost you, 

   All on a golden day, 

But when I dream of you, dear, 

   It is always brimming May.