POEM 1
I like rainy days
holed up in my office.
I write and hope.
On rainy days I retreat into my hole,
an animal hiding from a hunter.
Burrowed in the darkness
I hold my breath,
hoping.
Belief needs faith
and mine falters on beaches
where derisive laughter echoes on waves.
POEM 2
Are you someone
perhaps
whose table is covered with dirty dishes, bread crumbs, and rinds,
the detritus of a meal abandoned
while your mind rattles like a trolley car
through the old streets and alleys of your mind
stopping erratically at words that might show up
on a postcard
marked for a stranger
who hungers for them
like a child yearns for breakfast?
POEM 3
Funny we say, get your life in order.
Like there's some sort of sequence to life
a series of slots
arranged just so
and we only need to choose
the right one,
that ghosted teasing one
that will make it all ok.
There's slots for love, money, family
maybe ten slots for each,
but which is the right choice,
your lucky slot
that sets up your life
from beginning to end
and back again
paying out regularly,
the hot slot of your life?
POEM 4
My thoughts are relentless,
A horse kicking against its stall.
Bang bang bang.
I want out
I want
I want
Put the horse
to pasture
Let it doze
under a tree
in the afternoon heat
oblivious to gnats
It has what it needs.
POEM 5
Summer is time to take notice.
Trees shimmer like restless horses
and pastures split by stony brooks
fill with wildflowers.
Breathe in the dusty dry air
and enjoy the sun baking your bones.
Prairie skies are so blue
they make clematis jealous,
and dissolve into black nights
where the Summer Cross tilts
against the mottled Milky Way.
Yellow Jupiter wobbles in the south
and Hercules sports his cluster as a fuzzy boutonniere.
Summer is time to take notice.
POEM 7
Fall approaches
like an old suitor
who kneels on the dry grass
and offers yellowing tips of cottonwoods
instead of gold rings.
It scatters love in the brown leaves
that litter the grass
but is too self-absorbed to realize
its touch hardens zucchini,
diffuses its green tendrils
to a yellow transparency
from which heavy gold flowers droop
and swelling fruit slouches in the damp soil.
Fall blinks and early cool evenings
darken the horizon
to enfold heavy crab-apples
into its shadow.
POEM 6
I like backyards.
Front yards are
meant to impress
but back yards are for living.
Smoke rises from barbecues
like a gathering storm
and neglected gardens
twist themselves into knots
while parents
slouch on lawn furniture,
thumb their magazines,
sip beers,
and yell at screaming kids
who abandon their bulging pools
to squirt each other with yellow water rifles.
Dogs smile a frowsy benediction
and pant in the deep shade of cottonwoods.
POEM 8
The mill on Big Otter Creek
murmurs of slower
grey-stoned days
that cycle
around the millstone,
where green water splashes
over the mill-wheel
into a dark pool
and ducks grunt
in answer to blackbird shrieks
while a memory of a girl
sways in the weeping willows.