The dragonfly scratched
his diminutive cranium,
accustomed to suburb’s
petunia, geranium.
I was so close
I overheard:
“What is this?”
his exact word.
Category Archives: Animals
July 17.19
Nemesis: Goddess of Divine Retribution
Vengefulness her main attribution.
My wicked ways put me on the hook
for a plague of ears with a “who, me?” look?
July 13.19
Two dazzling things happened yesterday, dear reader!
As you know (or not), I’ve been in the throes of downsizing. I moved into this smaller house about a year and a half ago, and that makes this my second gardening season here. If you are a gardener, you know that you have to earn ownership of a garden; it doesn’t just happen. Nor does it “just happen” that a house becomes home. For me, it’s all a work in progress: this isn’t home yet either inside or out.
However, there were these two heart-stoppers yesterday:
I caught a glimpse of new color deep in a tomato plant. I was down on the ground as fast as my creaking knees would allow and, yes, there it was: the first red tomato! MY tomato! If you have read my blog in the past, you know that until recently my main claim to gardening fame was in consistent tomato-killing. I grew them in memory of my Grandpa Mauck but without much hope of eating actual tomatoes.
(Last year was The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, if you recall. The tomatoes had their revenge.)
And tuxedos in the dill! In my last house I had a magnificent dill patch and these very formal, elegant caterpillars feasted royally thereon. Swallowtails bobbed their thanks over what was left. This year the blasted rabbits ate to the ground every single dill plant I tried to grow, so I planted dill in a pot on the deck. Now come the beautiful caterpillars. Can swallowtails be far behind?
I dance a rheumatic jig and think that maybe home will happen.
July 9.19
Goosebumps on a frog
amphibious grinning bliss
perhaps you too have memory
of one immortal kiss.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to sculptor Pokie Park for her work titled
“I’ve Been Kissed.”
July 2.19
I am Gardener:
hear me growl.
Voracious brigands
sneak and prowl.
They come by land,
they come by air,
hordes on wing
and hordes from lair.
My harvest shrinks
with every hour
as they attack,
englut, devour.
Coneflowers! Moss roses!
My zinnia patch!
Impatiens! Basil!
Down the hatch!
I mix and sprinkle,
shake and douse;
my garden fragrance
l’eau d’outhouse.
Instead of blooms
and flowering vines,
all I see
are dollar signs.
June 27.19
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.
June 2.19
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.
