It seems to me
there’s an obvious plot
to get my goat
(which is got a lot).
How else explain
these mortal remains,
matted and framed,
among the day’s banes?
A villainous move,
a deliberate ploy,
to irritate, vex,
to taunt and annoy.
There was nothing to do
but take all apart
and grouse at the bug
who thought he was art.
Table for three
on patio breezy;
blue-plate breakfast,
echinacea over easy.
Please pardon the filmy look, dear reader.
Sneaking up on finches requires a window between them and me,
and some deft manipulation of Venetian blinds and camera.
Sometimes I seek pattern and purpose,
a sense of order and reason,
so I wander in Nature’s museum,
restoring in every season.
Just when I think I have calmed,
and life seems a degree less preposterous,
Nature guffaws at my quest
and shows me a pod that’s a walrus.
More thanks to the sharp eye of photographer S.W. Berg.
Morning came
too quietly,
neither chirp nor trill,
but only cicada’s
serrated drone.
A very timid cricket
tuned his small pipe.
There I stood,
knee-deep in July,
prickly and unsure,
so restless was the quiet.
Now the dark of August nights
and no firefly winks.
The Green Heron blats
like fallow French horn
once or twice a day,
and maple leaves,
scorched,
bleed at their edges.
Do I imagine
the urgency?
Time is out of sorts,
as am I.
The very hungry caterpillar
has cousins by the score;
single-minded critters
whose battle cry is “More!”
So formally attired,
you’d think them more discreet,
but completely unembarrassed
they hold dinner with their feet.
If I say I’ve known
a home that’s crowded,
the finches say
that’s highly doubted.
More thanks to photographer and finch landlord
S.W. Berg.
Befuzzed denizens
of tiny nest pocket
look like they stuck
their beaks in a socket.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And, if there are any grammar purists left,
my apologies to them for the improper conjunction.
On a still summer evening,
near the trees’ looking glass,
I developed the fidgets
from eyes in the grass.
I share my shade gladly,
I grant it rent-free,
so why this imperious
staring at me?
Magnanimous me,
all live-and-let-live —
could they be thinking the shade
is not mine to give?
Snuggled foursome,
still,
sky-dyed,
belies the thrash
and jab inside.
Scrawny, tipsy,
life emergent
insists
to be
is ever urgent.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
If I were clothed
in raucous blue,
in alien world
I never knew,
I think I’d be
more erudite
than to flaunt myself
on terrain of white.
No, I didn’t skoosh it. I escorted it outside.
