Outside Dog, Now in a Convenient Poem Form!

Saw just his head
Ears flopped
As he popped up above the road horizon
A canine whack-a-mole
Playing peek-a-boo.
He snatched a look of me
Talking on the phone in my truck by the roadside
Then he dropped back out of sight
on this Groundhog Day
(Although living in Hawaii,
He'll never see Punxsutawney Phil)
Maybe a shadowy mongoose predicting
Six more weeks of paradise?
A few minutes later
He runs the fence line fast and free:
I get a “woof”
He gets a smile,
His to-do list seems short,
Mine now has dog biscuits
At the top
With three stars.
***

Turnips and Marigolds

If you want glory in your garden plant marigolds.
You will only have to sow the seed once likely
and leave the rest up to the sun and showers and soil
they will enthusiastically volunteer their lives and loveliness
they are not subtle these common characters
they push their faces up towards yours
and scream out
(for those who care to listen)
“Love me!”
And why not?
It's a fair trade. You'll get your monies worth, and more.



In my garden the little bees,
mere insect motes,
tickle the seeds out of the blossoms.
When dried you might spread them again
or simply let their nature and wisdom take charge.
They know well what to do
Their course well charted.

The seeds come bountifully, just
Stick a few dried blossoms in you pockets
and drop them here
hand them there...
mail them to a distant friend
and share!
as you are shared and gifted.
Beauty, so wanted and required
Has never been so generous
and so needed.

Tidings

We call upon the gods

in our darker times

To send us hope

of one more sun

A day whose zenith rises

higher

standing for a moment more

before the cold and dark

drives us inward to find a lesser fire

a warmth that must suffice

found perhaps in some reserve

dug deeper

kindled closer

until those memories

green and rising

among our dreams instinctual

turn and turn and turn again

and give us light

transient but fail safe

a gift of hope renewed.

Incomplete

There was a moment of silence,
After a bit of chat and news
About places and problems,
An ongoing story that I am familiar with...
It wasn't an awkward pause,
I was with you in important ways
Talking privately from the heart,
But it was also incomplete;
I could not see the faint pulse
Rising in the soft chords of your neck,
I could not fold my hand in yours
In your moment of disappointment
In your frustration
That you mask so well with
Patience and determination;
I know these things were there.
Pressing my eyes closed
I can conjure them across time and distance,
But my hand was on the cold indifference of the phone
And it is not the same.

The Other Side

Whatever you have been told
or think that you have learned
about humankind,
about the way things are
or the way things should be,
Pause and look in the other direction
Look on the other side,
let the pendulum swing, then
linger and consider:
Some truth surely lies there.

I Think

My body has a mind of its own,
I think.
And as much as I love me
and sometimes don't,
I feel like I am waiting
for some cracked door to swing open:
Come in, join me, I've been waiting for you.

A dear astrologer friend observed that
I had my head in the air
Having been born a Libra.
The rest of me having been liberated
from that realm
of though
of connectedness
of unity.

So as children sometimes say
"I am the boss of me."
And so, child-like, I need to plumb that unity:
  the pulse of my heart, the scratch on my leg,
  the ache in my back, the swirl in my mind...
that I might find my way
to being so self-immersed and newly rejoined,
And so to healing.