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GARY DALE BURNS
Rootless
Fruit cannot flourish
The bumblebee brushes not
The open, colorful enclosure,
The towering pride crumbles into grit.
His buzzing is but an absence
And a dark wind falls upon it.
Hives have tumbled, gardens
Of Cyrus withered, earth
Is washed over – the seed
Suffers all disaster
Yet, to root
















Sex
Is another matter,
And one of the first order –
Warm dust yoked to yearn
For young star bursts open, swirls
Motioning between the fluid
And the sustaining.
Love – is it what comes after
The bang? If we affirm all
That is was there to begin
With, all the known forces –
Gravity, matter, light:
Then this law was three
Too
















The town
Variety show
Has the balmy night
Guiding us under a roof
Of community; we’re seated
At half-court to hear from
The voices and instruments,
Neighbors unknown to display
Much greeting or glance
On the sidewalk, now on
Stage – Rhythmic and
Roiling creek bed with
Our hands wading
In applause
















The doe
Thrown down
Shoulder-to-shoulder
Heaving, panting for breath
Through the bubbles of blood
At her snout; And further along
They've pulled over, hazards flaring
Waiting for the natural coursing
Of their veins to settle –
The misery of accident, little
Allegories passed again
Come morning, in the
Rigid chassis, by
the leafless
woods
















Jade
Plant of eleva-
ting inch, showy ex-
pansion of green cloud-
polyps behind the condensa-
tion of a window; a thing or
A happening? Geologic time con-
templates the Life mineral: soft,
Above water, air-wrapped, loose
And fast – inexplicably brief –
A trauma, then, a callus.
Walk-about roots of
Strange trees leave,
Hell-tapping,
Un-earthed.







​​​​​​​
Slowly
The insects
And all who eat
Them return: sun-backed,
With web, wing, snapping ice-
freed features and traits flexing
Warm, gunning for buzz. These
Centrifuges of living energy,
Whirling away, unpolitical,
Unenvious, vacuuming up
The six-legged, the larvae;
While indoors, I smush
in annoyance, a flat
note falls through
piano strings
and dust.


Gary Dale Burns is a poet-educator from Portland, Oregon. His poetry has been published in Caesura, Chronogram and Cavalcade. His most recent publication is the chapbook '14 Years/Fourteen Sonnets' (2016) printed under the pseudonym G.E. Jarvis. In between performing his work in NYC and the Hudson Valley, he teaches Secondary English in the Northern Catskills of New York state.