reverie

firewood brittles 
in the unshielded heat
of low atmosphere summer 
losing half its weight 
to vanish midwinter 
in a small boxed fire — 
sometimes a canvas for reverie
equal to any cloud
and other times
nothing meaningful at all
equal to the other clouds.

ξ

shy canopy

what was all that shuffling away from recovery?
it’s-fine-no-worries or don’t-look-at-us-now?

peering for tenderness in the underbrush
we cut ourselves off and shelter old longings —  
glad for harvests narrowly missed.

after the first moment of forgetting 
we unroll the whole carpet of moving along.

it’s possible to become a shy canopy forest.

 ξ

patriarchs

there are patriarchs (I’ve met them) 
who vow quietly to themselves
never again to do dishes.
you may host one and
it doesn’t matter the number of days
he will sit in his invention — 
an era beyond kitchenwork — 
reformatting his ordinary thoughts
keening for the ship 
that steams upriver slowly
with his loftiest mattering 
away from a torment of unmet goals.

ξ

Nathaniel Calhoun lives in the Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand. He works with teams that monitor, protect, and restore biodiversity in ecosystems around the world. He has published or upcoming work in Guesthouse, takahē, Azure, I-70, DMQ, Misfit, Quadrant, and Landfall. Quite rarely, he tweets @calhounpoems