January ends!
Huzzah and hooray!
This dark dismal winter
creeps on its way
to February, March
and perhaps some sunlight
away from this ominous
sunless blight.
I’m counting on February
and know I will stew
if someone sneaks in
a January 32.
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Connections: January 30.17
Epistaxis
word so dressy
but it’s still nosebleed
obnoxious, messy.
I have this thing
called H.H.T.*
commonest symptom
nosebleeds, you see.
So people say
“What a big yawn —
I’ve had nosebleeds
they’ve come and they’ve gone.”
Not for me
with H.H.T.
Instead of blood vessels
with cute little capillaries
I have kinky pretzel-like
vascular vagaries.
Some are big
and some are small
but “older” and “weaker”
apply to them all.
From brain in the north
to legs in the south
the bleed that startles most
is the one in the mouth,
that look to which
I most aspire:
the dripping, sated
happy vampire.
I’m sick and tired
of all the red tissue
but I realize this
really isn’t the issue.
The headlines fill me
with fear and foreboding
the whole bloody mess
is too near exploding.
Epistaxis is just
that last mythic straw
which gets the angst
unstuck from my craw.
*Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasias, aka Osler-Weber-Rendu Syndrome,
a genetic bleeding disorder I tried to describe previously in In Our Blood.
It’s about a lot more than nosebleeds.
Connections: January 28.17
Crumpled
something tall and proud
lies felled
death took it
then blade
now knelled
in crackling whisper
as kin mark
their own sure geld
respectfully distant
from remnants
sentinel’d
in tender long shadows
shrouded
farewelled.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives,
Vernon Hill Gallery.
Connections: January 27.17
How do we get to heaven?
So many ways competing.
Somehow hydraulic lift
seems like flagrant cheating.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Connections: January 26.17
Snow on the rocks
chilled apéritif
prelude to banquet
of petal and leaf.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Connections: January 24.17
My grandson, conspicuous by absence,
eventually made me curious
I’d seen him depart to the basement
where he couldn’t hear or see us.
Neither angry nor antisocial
he just wanted, I think, some space
and this is what I found
with contentment on his face.
A guy can love his family
and their hypertonicity
but also love a bit
of peace and simplicity.
Connections: January 23.17
Whenever I see soupy ice cream
I think of my two aunts
a CPA, a PhD
lifelong combatants
locking horns like sisters
in polysyllabic petard
as to whether ice cream’s better
softened or rock hard.
Connections: January 22.17
Connections: January 21.17
You may think this black-and-white
but it’s a color shot
this is Nature’s palette
inspiring it’s not.
Our days so dark and gloomy
there are teardrops on the tree
why can’t it be October
in perpetuity?
Connections: January 20.17
When the world is too much with us
and we need a Shangri-la
it’s time to get away
to the holistic basement spa.
With Tonka therapy
and sump pump ambiance
the clientele is served
with flair and flamboyance.
Sometimes they can’t keep up
I’m very sorry to say
I cannot get you in
they’re overbooked today.
With apologies to Wordsworth.
Oddments 