Elemancy by Chris Crittenden

obliterated by a vigor
of rain, the stubborn dust
of cities upon cities,
of gone animals and creatures,
whirled astonished
in a sibilant dance,
ripples of hallelujah
borne on its percussion.
and we could celebrate,
free of mummified fears,
from tentacles of desert
that swirled on the wind
down into our rasped throats,
believing once more
that the gods were not stagnant,
that the glisten of new rivers
carried an essential trust,
immune to auspices of privilege,
and the meanness of gates.
it seemed the land itself
had become a shiny bird
with unstoppable feathers,
branched into many and
exuberant wings, every
molecule alert, befriended,
in a great unison of flying.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Ponderance by Chris Crittenden

comes that late exhale of day
which marks the sun’s ritual loss.

effusions tint the Earth fiery
even as she shuns the sky dome’s paling.

trees reach from intent shadow,
audacious as wicker calyxes,

entrancing the scleral moon.

in conjugal aeries, wind-combed clouds
march in rolling dresses,

or equally drawn-out suits.

if, now, a winter rabbit
ghosted from a pod of shorn birch,

with fur so wise it married
a humble snowdrift,

who would see?


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Birdwatchers by Chris Crittenden

we freeze as one into scarecrows,
enduring a brisk woolen day.
a char of juncos
in an orange copse taunts us.
soon we are blurry again,
cautious within Van Gogh fields,
hunkering like sandhill cranes
over snaky ground.

our clothes strive
to unleash themselves
in a muddle of fibrous fits;
but we slog with gusto, ankles
sucked by muddy mouths,
our binoculars leading us on
with the flair of rumors.

Dunson glasses an owl
scrunched in a crook like a forest gnome.
whatever it dreams,
our rude surprise will not cater.
we chatter at the jpeg moment
as it glares back at us with feline gall,
contemplating our apish ruckus
and the threat of crows.

later, through a swale
of gusty hisses, dead grass
shunts around our flappy gait.
wind seems to have scooped up all the birds,
cast them from our meander.
we watch precious wings
disperse with the aplomb of peppercorns
into a sunset roan.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA
 

Solar by Chris Crittenden

a rut of light
locks horns with pines

to loose
mercurial rills of gold,

gold licked and snatched
by manic leaves,

dribbling down
to vulgar shanties of decay.

even the swarth
of the filth that is death

luxuriates and swells,
guzzling the gift

sown from an infernal perch,
ramrodded

through unthinkable cold,
gold

that gilds sapphire,
impregnates green and crystals,

gold to stir
incarnadine cores.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Red Squirrel by Chris Crittenden

sputter and chip,
rebuke me with variants
of raucous croon,

you perky piccolo of fuss,
high on a spruce,
helming azure.

if i could shimmy, bristle,
and cackle like you,
besotted by the spirit of

Puck,

would i, too, dash
from my own moods,
a child lost to daredevilry--

and forget the madness
of the mean world
through the quicksilver roan

of my flips?


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Snowblink by Chris Crittenden

it puts the lie
to the white of the people
who came over
in their big bellied boats.
noon hits the field
and shatters, a bloodblaze
of angels. no puritan robe
this huge or capable
of inciting the sun.

we'd have to strip down
to bone, wash the crimson
off our sternums. our nerve endings
would have to be spliced, frozen,
and bundled with the paucity
of january alders.

if a just god held court,
it would be here, where boots
blemish pale satin, and ravens
seem pangs of the dead.
a place where ghosts can be molded
and presented as blunt-featured
evidence.

shorn logic waits nude,
sheathed in clear steel and unafraid--
as if we could learn
if we stood mute and calm,
tilting prayers to icicles,
swallowed by their truth.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Annoying Fly by Chris Crittenden

a fly like a meteor
chides my head,
orbiting the big bang
of my distress.

i nap
and its proboscis
daps on my sweat.
i complain
and it whines

like a misunderstood
wizard
whose vision is superior-
-full of sheens, prisms
and wonders--


as if it had seen god
through mandalic eyes.
found manna
on Universal Rundle.

it has zigzagged awed
and nose
dived true,
but never so dizzy
it forgets to see.

why should i be
its nemesis,
the claw in the gloom
that swipes? why must i
exist to thwart

its hallelujah?




Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Attunement by Chris Crittenden

on a silent pond
a bufflehead
sparks to flight,
sowing gleams
in its wake.
ribs blend
without flaw,
until it is clear
that physics
is a perfect harp.
anything that moves
strums it to play.




Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Outside by Chris Crittenden

pain melts
into the yellow of the sun.
the birds, too, are flames
and grass in the wind
supple wicks.

everywhere movement.
branches bob like cello bows.
wind hums across lindens
as if waking bassoons.

meadow golds
blur into festivals that could be.
the sky blooms into bees and flits,
each humming a line
in a polyglot play.

tragedies come and go.
romances upend.
what we thought were last acts
prove the dearest creations.




Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Taken by Chris Crittenden

spider was wearing
the slate-butter-black of the spruce,
flecked and striped just so.
she could have been a perch
of small twigs,
or a lichen smudge,
or a cradled down tuft.
her halo was leaf light
filtered to dapple
in the way that tigers
marry with vines.

mosquito,
sun-rich as seraphim,
orbited with erratic grace,
seeming to teleport and tease.
he plucked her lair
as if tuning a harp, lured
by the promise
of its fluctuant jewels.
until one strum
rippled forth a harsh shimmer,
and added to the music
a broken whine.


Chris Crittenden, USA

Piebald by Chris Crittenden

gyre of swifts
tangled in dizzy swoops
of black and white,

unstable
as aerial Celtic knots,
zestful as hummingbirds
beguiled by noon.

lust elates
their little chests,
makes them weave
like gears of a magic clock

until many of them
plummet
and the rest stream away,
leaving no signature.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Flight Dream by Chris Crittenden

slide along the curves of the sky,
effortless and smooth,
until you meet a cloud and bounce,

soaring back toward the highest seat,
laughter your wings,
to sit where all things can be seen,

the Earth a paisley
of blue-green hyacinths,
the sun a jewel on your chest.

the clouds come to you
like sheep on a ledge
that turn into silver coins and fall;

all life below riotous with color,
reaching up with eager stalks
to celebrate.



Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

After Dusk by Chris Crittenden

mauve has gone down
the long rollercoaster sprint
of a firefly's throat.
we are offered a fabric
without spectrum or prism,
dark curtains
drawn on a lavish stage.

nothing left
except hints of lost embers.
glints and glows like magic tips
of an Etch a Sketch
that never paints.

we must do the work ourselves,
filling in the canvas,
guided only by a rare
meteor scar.

what we see, all our dreams,
merely a whimsy of stardust,
clouds of fleshed glitter
kicked up by the hobos in our heads.

that's night's secret,
as if we didn't know-
we wear ourselves,
feel our own secrets,
when we button on the dark.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Sunset Song by Chris Crittenden

tea-leaf sky,
crushed calendulas and smeared mallows.
the sun flees this garden
like Romeo growing redder,
exiled by his blush.

we want to spread this marmalade,
like toddlers brazen and quick,
swirl with our raised finger
painting fingers,
and loose a giggle as we splatter forth
a dragon's yellow tail.

we want to bubble with laughter
that fizzes in our throats,
bloom bouquets on bright breaths,
and float with them, giddy
as dandelion puffs.

the gorgets of once-seen hawks,
embers fleeting and rare,
tint our bottomless eyes.
sunset has given us answers,
more certain than the dark.
never again these reaches to be known
as empty.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Lichen by Chris Crittenden

the judge
who consigns my soul
will have the same pale eyes
and stare just as long,
perusing the tome of my seasons;

yet to me it will seem
we have no time together;
that i barely notice
a jade sphinx
before she is gone.

only shadows call the lichen love,
taking time to savor every lobe-
and only on certain days
when the light wanes sweet.

she never sulks,
even when dew makes her cry,
basking in pure air
like the portrait of a nude.
one brushstroke a year.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Passadumkeag by Chris Crittenden

i drift like a birch canoe
sewn of strips of my skin.
each artery a stolen name:
passadumkeag,
mattawamkeag,
abagadasset.

there are deer in my chest,
and a few bear; but there should be wolves
and pumas too.
we live in a world
where paws hardly sprint
and streetlamps slaughter.

our bright minds ride wires,
but part of me refuses to budge.
i don't want a son
with chips in his nape.

some of us will not cross over
into that place
where raindrops fall on screens.
we choose real wind.
natural leaves over the virtual.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Snowshoeing At Night by Chris Crittenden

wigwams of moonshadow
cast by trees
across drifts that host
sparkling Orions.

only i alien,
gigantism
of pulse and huff,
the spruce like a weir
catching my blunders
with quiet.

cairns left by squirrels
guide the way,
middens like glyphs
on half-sunk knotholes.

where the thread leads
witching hoots might say,
lust-tuned staccatos
sounding the labyrinth.

and yet the forest
is too deep to explain.
even owls will never know.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Wild Wind Dance by Chris Crittenden

insistent wind
licking my window,
accosting the glass
till it shudders
from chilly frissons,

labile wind
sighing to accelerate,
plucking stars
and hurling them
into an allegro of rain,

wind moaning arias
too fierce to hear,
aerial tongues splitting
in loquacity-

trees dance to its rhythms
beyond midnight,
swaying on a carpet
of lost limbs-

the price of tarantellas,
too much mad whirling,
too much clapping for a goddess
invisible except for the spell
of her skirt.


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Wet Windy Leaves by Chris Crittenden

hunchback imps
slouch over pawls
of tousled grass,

serving as sprockets
in the clockwork
of the lawn,
telling time in fits

moored to quirks
of gusts-
flip-flopping
like unhappy turtles,
then mousetraps
on a lark,

snapping
in false danger,
nipping each other's shreds,
groping

wistfully,

as if they might be stars
in a swatch,
granting a child's wish
with every stagger,
every galumph.




Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Ranch Trees by Chris Crittenden

frondy ashes
clasp squiggles of sun,
trickle the heat
across whispers

while breeze
tousles their manes,
airy green foams
above centurial brawn.

who touches these tomes,
learns from the roughs
of their grimalkin bark?
their midlife knotholes?
their sapling dreds?

who remembers them
when dreaming under plaster
as they sentinel midnight,
sighing?


Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA