On this day
most of a lifetime ago
we stood up before family,
blood-tied with freely chosen,
and declared that we would
live together loving each other
for the rest of our lives.
So far, so good.
(top: otter couple; middle: me at 24; bottom: Laura, Jess, and me around our 3rd anniversary-1979)
The monkey is fun to talk to
when he hops off my back
to shoot the breeze
and chew the fat.
I cannot smoke the peace
pipe now, my tribe is at war
with the monkey; he doesn’t
care, he wants utter control.
He would just shrug at my death.
I like to make him laugh.
It makes my back slippery.
Eventually, he will slide
away and dissolve.
He will never die, but if
I can remember this awkward groping,
this disconnectedness,
this mortal fatalism,
I can use the emotions as a club
to keep him off of me.
But still, he’s fun to talk to.
(from bellaxthree.com)
You are surprised to see me.
I stand by the black motorcycle
as you hobble down
the steep asphalt, your right-rear
more of a rudder than a leg.
You freeze, head low, tail down.
We regard each other.
“Deer kick you?” I say. “A car?”
Your eyes reflect the porch light,
yellow and bright.
I don’t blink either.
I open my mind
but hear only stone
from the wall behind you.
Perhaps your community will help
punch that meal ticket stuck
in the pocket where your paw
curls off the ground as
you vanish through the rhododendron.
I light the bike and rumble to work,
grateful your leg is not my brain.
(top: king-animal.blogspot.com; bottom: coyoteyipps.com)
Roaring, the city
comes across the broad nightscape;
airplanes are lined up.
(city: hdfons.com; planes: travel-tour-guide.com)
(Note: sometimes, these just write themselves. 🙂 –jrs)
Rum is of Nature:
sugar cane and a bright brain.
I am all for it.
(sugarcane: bubblews.com; 1 Barrel: uncommoncaribbean.com)
It sits hollow near the sand
washed up the road where the
other houses look like waddling waders, maybe
clamming, maybe just enjoying the wet.
Old Bill built his bungalow back
in the teens when high tide was still a half-mile out.
Didn’t want the waves to keep
him awake at night, he said.
But still, he walked to the water
every day. He was pushing eighty
when the realization hit him
like a sack of wet mice.
It wasn’t so far to walk now.
Those Antarctic ice sheets must
really be filling up the big tub.
When he clutched his chest
and went to his knees going
out the front door that fine July
morning, his last thought as he
rolled to his back on the
porch where he loved to listen:
At least I didn’t drown.
(water house: worth1000.com; Sandy damage: insurancejournal.com)
(Note: this came from a nightmare I had when I was small, in Buffalo, NY. Why I still remember it as vividly as I do remains a mystery.–jrs)
I cowered in my sleep
unable to turn away,
unable to awaken to the grey
room where I watched out
the window at the swooping
blue jacket trying to get in.
It knew where I was.
It flashed by the window
and soared above the rooftops
across the street, always
rushing back to stare in at me.
It wanted me
and I didn’t know why.
Sixty years later
I wear one much like it
as I rumble across the wide west
wrapped in the wonderful
metaphor called wanderlust.
Maybe that little boy
knew something I’ve forgotten.
The dream still haunts.
The jacket has me now.
(Dali clocks: dailymail.co.uk; chair: polyvore.com; biker: threatquality.com)
Recognition flies
in the face of memory;
the blackbird alights.
(top: bigthink.com; blackbird: allaboutbirds.org)
Would I know your face now?
I like to think I would,
but memory is an often tricky thing;
I’ve known it to add
and to subtract.
What I know
as true may not be;
where I’ve been may
not be where I was.
Memories don’t always cascade.
I fell in love
with your face long ago
but didn’t understand
that love is more than
a feeling, so much
more than I could muster.
Your face was the surface
of a pool from which I drank.
Perhaps I caught a glimpse
of the deeper as you left.
(horses: wallpapers4psp.com; face: ninjacrunch.com)
Morning bends the sun
to the task of finding a
way to dark of night.
It seems always to
be uphill to the western
arc of horizon.
I feel the edge rise;
thank goodness for gravity;
I’d fall to the sky.
(top: arnoarrak.com; bottom: westernhorizon.blogspot.com)
The audiobook is live!
Narble Furt Lives 