Two Poems

The Mist Bench

Even at night, at random
a click
– and mist fumes

from the watch
towers clouding the cuttings
with fog

Bare leaves are downy
turn blurred
and glaucous

as the fine fur plumps
and sleeves itself
with water

Ten beats and it’s
finished
The electric leaf

buried in the leaves
is parched
and replenished

all night

Year-Round Chrysanthemums

In mid-July
they think it is winter

All it takes
is an hour’s incandescence

at midnight
and their day

germinates, twenty-four hours
makes two

Year-round chrysanthemums
the long nights

make you rich
and fecund

Your bunched, curled faces
magenta and saffron

phototropic with desire
inexorably riding the light