On the outside looking in,
dangled and precarious,
living lives inside
fleetingly vicarious,
plying restless squeegee,
removing layered goo,
so those looking out
have clarified world view —
what compels the doing
only to be done again?
I think they must be writers
nothing else explains this zen.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
Millennia ago
a poet thought
“Why a word?”
and then she wrought
on desert stone
“Here am I”
knowing we’d
be passing by.
Thanks to photographer Mary Jo Bassett, who claims these are
two-thousand-year-old directions to Starbucks.
I leave to you, dear reader, all degrees of credulousness.
For want of a match
no fire is born;
fuel sits useless
cracked, forlorn.
Somewhere the match
explodes, flame-plumed
but dies in seconds
self-consumed.
Isn’t it so
in writer’s head?
We get cold splinters
in combustion’s stead.
Thanks more to photographer S.W. Berg.
A heavy hand of winter
weighs on us today
a hoary wind lamenting
would blow us all away.
But here I sit in fuzzy robe
warm if not exotic
contemplating verb and noun
how utterly Quixotic.
Is it all inconsequential
or is it something more?
Should I care, or should I shrug?
The wind shrills “You’re a bore!”
Yet here’s my motley garden
leftover Valentine reds
my glorious amaryllis
with quadruple flaming heads.
Their warmth declares a battle
‘gainst dark and cold without.
I’m stuck between the forces
of will and writer’s doubt.
Where’s the writers’ catalog
that offers such invention?
I need more than prompt and blog —
a step beyond convention.
My writer’s brain is jumbled
by inchoate voices within;
I need these to cut through the mumble
to help me unriddle the din.
I’d put one on my shoulder
and the other on my head;
I know I’d be so much bolder
if I could just hear what’s being said.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
ON GOURD SHOPPING
I stalled amid produce
and bales of hay.
Was I obtuse
or recherche?
Fingering bumples
gnarls and folds,
enamored of lumples,
emeralds, golds.
Time spent was absurd
to choose those that were righter:
you’d think they were words
and I were a writer.
OOF!
Lah, lah, lah.
WHOA!!!
AAAARRRGH!
Lah, lah, lah.
HUFF, PUFF!
So which one is the writer?
Bee.
Totally.
Happy Labor Day!
