Leland Jamieson

Early Freeze 

We raked last leaves beneath the first-out stars.
All night wind moaned and blew so cold it rolled
up rhododendron leaves like green cigars
by dawn, and thrust up “throw-rugs” — clay cajoled
atop small fields of milk-white crystals.  Cold!
I carried stove wood in across milk stalks
crunching beneath my feet in aftershocks.

Astral Body

The codger wakes up dreaming of the first
sweetheart he ever dared to kiss — a girl
sixteen, same age as he.  How great his thirst!

How bring the dream’s warm image back, unfurl
what drove them windward, heeling to that high
of innocence — as silken-white as pearl?

Though memory fades across his sleeping eye
and resting heart — the dream he can’t recall —
sweet feeling is its corpus delicti.