Creek by Taylor Graham

What's more joyful

than running water? After rain,

our little creek leaps 

and giggles, blows bubbles, chatters

over rocks whose moss opens

all its green mouths to sing

the river song. 

And the old willow leans over the bank 

to see his own reflection 

wrinkled and riffled

with moving, ageless water.

What's more joyous?

A backyard puppy 

who's never seen a natural flow - 

only stainless bowls and faucet, hose, 

and pipes.

Here's free water 

on its great adventure toward the sea. 

What's more joyous

than a puppy tentatively wading out 

then drenching herself 

in that journey, 

splashing as each droplet leaps 

the stairstep falls; finally 

dashing back out

to shake

creekwater all over us

sparkling, joyous in April sun.

Taylor Graham, California, USA

Magic by Taylor Graham

For ten days the old dog growled

and grumbled at the new

pup, and begged us to make her

disappear. She ragged him, 

hung from his ruff, bit him on the ear. 

An old dog only longs 

for quiet, his peaceful cedar-bed, 

a slow amble 

down the grassy swale 

to sleep beside the running stream.

But this morning, he lifts his paw

and bows, as if asking her

a question; looking her life in the eyes -

puppy eyes. Magic,

this old-dog invitation to the dance.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Where I Used to Live by Taylor Graham

I’d walk the ridgetop into sunrise,

surprise overnight cobwebs, gold-filament
woven in black-oak.
Evenings I’d hike to a manzanita clearing
and climb the boulder overlooking
canyon, bedrock mortar slipping
to sleep above a nameless creek.

I’d listen for the spirits of the people
who lived there and moved away.

In this new place, how do I find sunrise
under Stone Mountain? Daylight
strikes on chert, not granite. Sun sets
out of sight. No canyon overlook;
a winter creek washes out the fences.
Spotted towhees flit in and out of windfall
from the last big storm.

People used to live here and call it home, and

then moved on. I listen for their spirits.

Taylor Graham, California, USA

Ode to an Oaken Desk by Taylor Graham

They drove two hours in the rain for a bargain.
Solid oak that keeps, without polish, its sheen,
its fingerprint of living tree-grain under a tarp
on the porch. No room in this new house.

They came from a Green Valley with a parrot
singing in its cage. She loved that we, too,
live in a Green Valley. Her husband read no law
of physics or fortune in coincidence of names.

Stars hid behind stormclouds, downpour
on the way. Just in time, the desk
fit perfectly in their Odyssey SUV.
Serendipity, parrot singing an epic voyage.

From Green Valley to Green Valley
across a hundred miles of asphalt,
how many poems may yet leaf out
of this milled, transplanted oak?




Taylor Graham, California, USA

Culling by Taylor Graham

I was going to write a poem. Instead, all morning
I’ve been pulling out periwinkle by the roots.
I love periwinkle, its blossoms of a blue shade
I can’t describe except by its own name. But
periwinkle has overgrown my tiny island between
dingy lawn and pebble deck, twining all over
the red-clay Mexican tree-of-life atop a boulder,
which I meant to be a focus – more than that,
a symbol – of the garden. What I’ve torn out,
I’ll stick in the ground on that bare slope above
the field, and hope it grows there. It’s hardy as
human language. It just doesn’t belong where it is,
not so much of it. Let’s say, it’s too much herbage.
What does this have to do with writing a poem?


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Inheriting a Garden by Taylor Graham

Heavenly bamboo outside my window
amber/tender-green and saffron – never trust
a garden planted by a former owner.
What did she mean? Firethorn and holly,
every bush bears birds and hunger-berries.

Could a garden’s keeper die of roses?

Still, heavenly bamboo draws me into
cantilevered daylight through a lace of oaks.
A place to gather stars, their blossoming
already light-years gone. Who planned
their gardens? Down here, bees weave
silken carpets of rosemary, lavender, and air.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Burying the Dog by Taylor Graham

sonnenizio on a line from Frost

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
their darker roots reaching into grassy swale,
be full of darkling birds at evening – phoebe,
nuthatch, thrush – to sing the bright-dark
elegies of greenwood. A place darkened
by bones leaching into rich dark earth held
fast by rock, dark as dead dogs gone. Here
the young buck pauses, dark-set eyes alert,
sniffs the air, then springs away into darker
shadow-thickets. As afternoon darkens
under passing clouds, the dark-light dance
of oak leaves rises to a darkening breeze.
Time for the dark homing. A young dog marks
his master’s call. Roots touch the deep darks.



Taylor Graham, California, USA

Township and Range by Taylor Graham

No matter how long we stand
at the overlook, this scene won’t stay
still. Not the ponderosa pines
holding just enough wind in their arms
to sway slightly, like old folks
at the edge of dance, remembering
music no one plays anymore; not birds
concealed among the heather-pink
of manzanita bells; nor the cattle, pale
yellow flowers drifting below us
in the swale, too lost in meadow grass
to give bellow.

By the contour map we’re at a divide:
straight survey lines come together here,
marking things off against the heave
of uplift, slough of green hillside
after late-spring rains. Beyond the passes,
a sonic boom. Do I imagine a matching
tremor underfoot? There’s a brief
shapelessness as air wavers
between us and landscape,
the trigonometries of those old
surveyors. It dances to the passionate
steps of Earth.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Egyptian Lion at Sydenham by Taylor Graham

The Crystal Palace burned. His
nose is gone, his flanks graffiti’d.
Still he guards the walkway,

anciently couchant before a tapered
tower of steel, a sort of techno-skylark
to capture song, or messages.

Who knows what news the sky
might bring. Lightning. Blitz. Man’s
forged fire gone amok.

That dome of industry, iron skeleton
under crystal skin that shone
with heaven’s colors in its blue-

stained windows, the Palace
burned. Before its ruins
the lion lies at guarded ease.

Future is a figment of the sky.
His face is shadow.
Shadowed eye.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

All Last Summer by Taylor Graham

He dreamed of rafting
out of his schoolbook life,
trustful under stars that chart
the course of rivers, to a destiny
of praise. He’d dig for treasure
on an island off the map
and out of time. He’d dare
the ghost with grinning teeth
and make it say its dead secrets.
So he dreamed all summer-long
till summer ended in a fall
of river toward sea,
and Huck Finn drifted out
of childhood.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Bearing Us Away by Taylor Graham

Nothing is certain but death and
questions. How many of those
we wish to ask the newly departed –
the secrets they take with them,
all those things they tried to mention
when we weren’t listening.
How my sister loved horses, and I
could only hear hoofbeats
beneath me. How the earth rings now,
metal making divots in soil
under the reverberating grass.


Taylor Graham, California, USA.

Sawmill by Taylor Graham

Gone the west wind’s lilt
and laughter, the forest-sighs
of trees

as twisted woodgrain meets
the screaming blade
and wallboards tremble

at the exact moment
late afternoon sun comes
angling through

an upper window, motes
go flying in light-
struck splatters,

a galaxy that swirls
and settles
sawdust on the floor.


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Aurora by Taylor Graham

The Northern Lights hang
in hot green arcs and seething violet,
a silken canopy slipping by instants
into dark, a whispered
secret of the polar night.

Do we dare step out
of the armor of our day, our
doors and ceiling,
and shiver
under the burning sky?


Taylor Graham, California, USA

Cleaning the Saddle by Taylor Graham

I take a rag and wipe away the dust.
The leather’s dry. I rub in saddle soap
in swirls from swell to cantle. Touch of rust
on metal. Scuffs and wear marks. Heels and rope

and smell of horse long gone –
those canters, leaning with the stride
of Molly-black mare. But a girl
grows up, away

from horses; keeps the saddle for awhile.
It’s time to clear out memories and space.
I wonder what this old brown leather’s worth.
I take a rag and wipe away the dust.

Landscape with Rocks and Trees by Taylor Graham

[Cezanne, 1895]

I think I know this scene.
Boulders clutched by roots,
and the smooth trunks bent
around granite contours
by weather and the immeasurable
growth of rock.

Long green brush-strokes
convey a season’s yield of grasses.
If I looked away – say,
out the window
at my parceled acres
and the newly fallen pine –

and then if I looked back,
how much longer
would those brush-strokes be?
What new shadows,
what graceful bending tree
might have fallen?

Would someone
dreaming a different landscape
have come to drive the first
fencepost?
Would the barb-wire
already be strung?

Taylor Graham, California, USA

Morning Star by Taylor Graham

When you couldn’t climb the stairs
I slept beside you on the floor.
A moonless night, but through the window
some bright planet stood in the east,
beacon for a journey.

Some say, the heavens don’t hold messages
for dogs. Perhaps the sign was meant
for me. Was it Saturn, twisting inside
his iron ring of grief, who kept
my vigil? Or Venus, orb of love

in a cold sky? Morning extinguishes
the brightest star. I took your leash
and led you out the door, first
station of a journey to that place
I trust we’ve known before.


Taylor Graham, California, USA.
Taylor's website can be found at: http://somersetsunset.net/Poetry.htm