Bill of Goods

It’s time once again to scramble among the pieces
Picking through pot shards
Looking to connect the cracks
And shockingly discover
What?!
That some black go on white
Some straight belong with the curved
Some surprise in every pack.
There is no profit in this business
Of monkeying around
Clowning around
Hanging around.
No.
Instead you pay.
It’s a kind of layaway…
And then one fine day you make your last payment
Ah
And snooze headed realize
This doesn’t look anything like the picture
It’s a bill of goods  
This isn’t what I ordered!
But
Of course it is.  

Morning View

This is the view that has been so selected,
Not of the mountain or out to the sea, no…
This morning while seated in the rocking chair
The screen door frames in dark wood hues
An olive swath of rain flecked grass
And deeper still are bosomed trees cutting toward the cloud stacked-sky
Heaped in piles and drifts upon the sallow blue
That has failed so far to shake the morning haze.
And standing watch just nearby
Tall seed-headed grasses are arching low
As if to graze upon their own sweet richness,
While ladder-backed ferns shuffle and sway
Waiting impatiently for their turn,
Lingering damply in this milling crowd,
Waiting for the sun.

What We Need Is Protection

What we need is protection,
A roof without a drip
And walls that keep us leeward
Of wind that throws up sand and snow,
A canvas wall or stone and mortal,
A safeguard against the onslaught
That turns some days from kind and protecting
Into torments of the mind and flesh.

We need love.
The kind that build a safe-house
And respite,
One that offers a smile bowl
Of nurture
And words that build strong
Foundations
Where we sing softly to ourselves,
Then out loud to the universe
Our sweet song,
And where we dance
The sway and shuffle
That our feet have always know.

Some must come from me
Part to give and part to stay
And some must come from you
A helpful hand that sees us through.

To Keep My Head from Flying Off

Once I was told that I have powerful neck muscles
And while I briefly wandered in my delusory grandeur,
I was gently reminded that those steel-cables of bones and sinew
Connecting my ass-self to my real-self, up there,
In my right mind, here in my western world,
Were there because they were exercised
Daily, in isometric desperation
To keep my head from flying off
Into the air,
Like some slingshot
Like a hot air balloon.
This head, cooked full of vapor and tattered dreams,
Non-sense and half sense
Mostly worthy of mild mockery,
Mostly runs that same old cassette
That plays and plays in the truck
Because breathless, I cannot depress the reject button,
Because I cannot seem to get ahead
And leave the back then or maybe when
Somewhere, softly abandoned by
The side of this bumpy road.

How's the Weather?

I grew up in Ohio.
We didn't talk about our pains and our problems.
We talked about the weather.
Maybe sports...
Perhaps it was metaphor...but likely
it was out of fear
of showing our weaknesses,
our vulnerability.
We still were hard off the praire farm and
steel mills and blisters raising tools.
Many suffered in silence,
when it was their turn,
or so it seemed.

Perhaps the Bible helped
you know
the promise of a better life,
next time.
Or maybe a shot and beer and
happy days are here,
again
I am at the confluence
at the verge
of letting go of old ways and things
of those people and times
at least enough to see a new road
a new me,
But it isn't easy
as I fine my heals dug in to that soil, deep
and you know,
The rain is sure to let up,
soon.

Another Island

I am the courier of memories carried
Over tides of time and oceans of uncertain distances,
Dispatched today by the taste of
A single blueberry,
On this a rain washed morning
Grown on the slopes of an ancient volcano
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
And with its sudden flash of flavor
A memory stirs loose of
Fond moments from some time ago
On another island,
This one hewn from granite by glacier and nor’easter
Hard off the coast of Maine,
Great Cranberry,
And though not easily attained
Does yield its small beauties and simple pleasures
That through the passage of time still endure:
Buckets of seastars stranded on the rocky shore
By moon swollen tides,
Great leaps of innocence from the mail boat dock
To the icy waters fresh from the cold north,
Sand dollars like small galaxies hidden amongst
The smooth dank stones rattling at the ocean’s edge,
And greater galaxies found overhead in the sweep of stars painted
On the true black of moonless nights,
Bicycles, chains clanging, ridden with fearless abandon
Down roads and lanes scented with balsam needles and salt hay,
And blueberries by the roadside
Free for the picking
One at a time or by the bucketful,
Sweet with the dawn and moist
With teardrops of fog-rendered waters,
Slowly lifting, burned away by the sun
Always abiding, written on the heart.