The odd nursery rhyme never hurt anybody

Maybe a poem a week was a better goal. Here is a draft of this week's, in all its cheesy glory:

70

I stay up late, by candlelight
at the drafting window
I go more miles than I’m supposed to
and come back through night.

As long as the wax is warm
and pools in my palm I move
nimble-toed and taciturn.

In the sunlight mornings
with your warm apple skin
covering my hands, we suss all we can
of the sun, far into westering

sky, until there is nothing for it
except to lay, spent
and cold in the dirt.

You are caked with mud
and mast and all manner
of junk; l take you down to the river
wipe away the twigs and blood

from when I bit your lip,
tasted sugar, and couldn’t stop
until the salt dripped down my chin.

A passerby sees innocents, vexing nature
with our play-dams of twigs and spit
and I am thinking only of
taking myself a tall, cool drink of water.

Comb the winter from my hair
and put it away somewhere; I have
enough candle to get us back a time or two.

I’ll darn your dresses by candlelight
you hem my shirts far from the window-
draft; the distance is dour and slow going
when we're damning ourselves, to outrun the night.

April Resolutions, in high and low

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will... write some poetry. And put it here. I was all geared up to make this resolution about writing a poem a day all month, or something like that, but knowing how I work, that would probably kill any inkling to write for the rest of the month. So I will post a few poems a week, at least, because it's amazing that we have a month dedicated to poetry, and it is also the month of my birth, and of digging in dirt and watching little green lifes begin.
So here is a translation of Miyazawa Kenji's "Village Girl" to kick off with:

村娘 　　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
畑を過ぎる鳥の影
青々ひかる山の稜

雪菜の薹を手にくだき
ひばりと川を聴きながら
うつつにひととものがたる


Village Girl

Birds shadow over fields,
the tips of mountains glimmer green—

immersed in spring-lark and river sounds
I crush the faded snow-mustard stem in my fingers,
talking of lucid and transparent things.