Storm tinctured
ocean plies its blue
like cathedral window
unknowable mystery
ungraspable hue.
Soaring, long-winged birds
marvel in their way
borne on air and wonder
opalescent swirl above
liquid sapphire under.
Many more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
Sunless spring,
summer clogged with mud,
daily outlook darkened
with endless storm and flood,
so rare the light of sunset,
the pond cannot believe its eye,
and stops in breathless wonder
to return it to the sky.
When orange lights on lavender,
it lacks in subtlety,
grandiose theater
its winged proclivity.
It urgently upstages
in drama quintessential,
pageant symbiotic,
brilliant, existential.
National Pollinator Week, June 17-23
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to the pollinators — may we bless and keep them!
Eyes up
or dead ahead
full-faced
uncorseted
youthful
oaken vertebrae
steel-enforced
DNA.
Downcast eyes
will not attend
the future that
these two portend.
Fearless Girl times two
foreseeing
each steadfast
in her own being.
To all the dads who have given the world Fearless Girls, a very happy Fathers’ Day!
With thanks to the unnamed photographer,
to sculptor Kristen Visbal,
and, of course, to Emmy.
In droplets weighed,
rain’s final word,
purling postscript,
barely heard.
There’s something to be said
for a line that’s imprecise;
like Mona Lisa’s wink,
it makes people focus twice.
This sign that’s not aligned
in parallel perfection
partners with the gleam
of nostalgia and confection.
Gumballs and a Coke lid,
iconic barber pole,
floors that mimic mirrors,
playful, even droll.
There might be message here
in tinseled frippery:
savor the cockeyed line,
seize gumball reverie.
Life can be so dark
with its arrows and its slings;
it’s good when it’s illumined
by bright and shiny things.
Yet more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
They hold to demonstrable truth,
this perspicacious pair:
just because you can’t see it
doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
Benedick Bullfrog
you might hear
raising to skies
his ballad drear.
Part buzz-saw
part bagpipe drone
Model T horn
baritone,
it wafts to me
in lyric croak
at noon’s high sun
and midnight’s stroke.
His plaintive raspy
tuneless song
his Beatrice finds —
she sings along!
A tuba-thon
would fall more lightly
on my ears
day and nightly.
Indifferent to
my needs circadian
they rapture in
duet Arcadian.
Oddments 