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.
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.
My muse! Impertinent,
wayward thing!
Taunting me
on mighty wing!
Graceful she,
in bluest height,
indifferent
as I try to write.
I watch her float,
from earth unbound,
while I, like stone,
am stuck to ground.
In those clouds
vocabulary,
eloquence
extraordinary.
She could bring it
to cloddish me,
but prefers to soar
metaphorically.
Well, dear reader, here it is again: writer’s block/slump/wasteland — call it what you will. I’ve been a big blank for over a week now. Yesterday I spent hours on a thought, trying to transfer it to words. I think I wore out the delete key.
What a mystery writing is. Not that I’m telling you anything you don’t know. Why do the words come and why do they not come? Where do they go, for heaven’s sakes?
I’ve not caught a glimpse of my muse, except perhaps in a particularly muscular buzzard, a.k.a. turkey vulture, hauling roadkill into the woods. Usually she’s a hawk, but she could have morphed. Right now I’d happily call her a buzzard. Now there’s a word. Don’t you love words that mean something just by the way they sound? Have you ever seen the book “Sound and Sense” by Laurence Perrine? My tattered, moldy copy dates back to my college days in the 60s. It says it’s about poetry but I don’t think so; it’s about the way the sound of a word makes it the perfect choice. Meaning isn’t the whole of it. The word must sound with the meaning. That’s prose, too. Just ask Sam Clemens.
I hope you are well, dear reader, and can still cling to sanity.
A snoop amid the boughs
beady-eyed, proctorial,
sizes up my gardening
with aspect territorial.
Sunday brunch al fresco
never better was
with family all decked out
in finest feather and fuzz.
In solemn grace
amid death’s drums
something beautiful
this way comes.
With thanks to Shakespeare
and to whatever benevolence
sent the swans to the pond.
In no way, dear reader, do I intend this to be some saccharine comment
about how things aren’t as bad as they seem:
things ARE as bad as they seem.
But sometimes there’s a moment of reprieve.
