bubble

I hear you in the other room

Your voice reminds me of your smile

It chases off my after-gloom

As I remember in a while

You will come out and sit with me

As we companionably read

Beside the dog, and drink our tea.

I think of this with utter greed.

There is no joy I wish for more

No comfort higher, greater grace

Than listening to our dog snore

While looking at your smiling face

Nose deep inside an open book

All unaware each time I look.

O Beautiful

I never understood the waves before;

It always seemed a silly little song.

To speak of waves of grain? It must be wrong.

The water always seemed to me much more

Than any field could be. How could it store

The slightest sense of surge, to bear along

A boat, and break? A farm is strong,

But like a wall, not like a wave, I swore.

Yet here, as night casts shadows on the snow

The wheat (unwaving yet, as it must grow)

Reminds me of the ocean rippling free

No waves as yet, but still an energy

That my sea-sense already seems to know

And recognizes past solidity.

Chanukah

Flicker little flame

Build a little light

In God's holy name

Last throughout the night.

Help us to remember

Long and far away

How once in December

Light for but one day

Stretched itself to eight

'Til more oil was found

To re-dedicate

Holy, sacred ground.

Let us not now be

Those from whom we're free 

Mire

I do not have the brain to be myself.

I grope towards me, but cannot seem to reach.

My soul sometimes seems put up on a shelf

Where from the box my insides slowly leach.

I want to think, but when I try I grind

Like gears too long un-oiled or unused.

There is an awful jamming in my mind

Where what was understanding is confused.

I used to leap from thought to thought with ease

Where now to say I plod would be too much;

A keyboard doesn't work with sticky keys

Nor do I think. I can't release the clutch

Enough to even settle in a gear.

Even reverse would be relief from here.

Decorah

Decorum has it's time and place, it's true.

When equals speak to equals, or when power

Speaks down to those who it tells what to do

That is decorum's right and proper hour.

But when the weak speak out against the strong,

Those trodden down against the treading heel;

When commons makes its case against the crown

And those beneath resist the rolling wheel

Their words are theirs, and, if indecorous,

The content, not the setting, matters more.

There is no right to triumph without fuss;

Decorum's no excuse to crush the poor.

If you object to what they say, say why;

Don't hide behind decorum. It's a lie.

Alberta

The sun is unprepared to burn 

In other's smoke. It turns too red

Too early; barely halfway through

The day, which seems at times the dusk

Already. But it takes its turn

Behind the forests, too soon dead,

Which we are breathing in, and grew

Only to make themselves a husk.

Our city is their living urn

And will continue, they have said,

To be so; this will be the new

Reality. We breath the musk

Of forests, but our lungs aren't clean

We breath in red, and never green.

Floodtimes

River Drive is gone. I say this not

To cause you any undeserved alarm

But just to catch and simplify a thought:

The river has stretched out its mighty arm

And taken back its own. The lowland plain

On either side belongs, not to mankind

(Though we may occupy it in the main)

But to the river. Where we have designed

Our dams and levees, we merely delay

Not stem its great resumption of itself.

The time will come, though not perhaps today,

When it will rehydrate the bottom shelf

And leave the Rock alone to peek its head

Above the Mississippi's watershed.

Tropes

Inside the room, of course, there was one bed.

Not even king, or queen, or full, but twin;

Each in her silence left concern unsaid

'Til one shrugged gently. "If you're in, I'm in."

The other nodded. "The sofa is too small

And won't fold out. The floor is not an option."

Though both agreed, they still began to stall

The moment of the premise's adoption.

One read her book, crammed in a little chair;

One puttered in the bathroom for a while

Pretending she just had to fix her hair

As if she'd ever cared about its style.

But nighttime still did come, and with it sleep;

The two awoke entangled in one heap.

3/30/23

Donald Trump's indictment has arrived

A day much longed for, and as much delayed;

While some are grateful to have now survived

To see it happen, others are dismayed.

I have my side, and I believe it true;

I must acknowledge others too exist;

And while I needn't treat it as they do

I cannot fail to know that they are pissed

And that brings danger. Danger that they will

In homage to a man I know a liar

Take to the streets in search of any ill

That may add fuel to his now desperate fire.

The day, although at long, long last achieved

Does not bring the elation once believed.

The death of a groundhog

The child may believe the warming air

Has promised spring two months before its date

Adulthood brings a plaintive worry there

That questions what it means about our fate.

A warm spring day in February finds

For those who can enjoy it, warmth and cheer;

The rest of us, with nasty little minds

Look on our thermometers with fear.

Perhaps I should embrace the child's wonder

Which lives but in the moment of the sun

And does not fear the danger of the thunder

That comes when this brief warming time is done

But I cannot; the most that I can do

Is let her hope, not raise my own anew.