Inspired by yesterday’s grit and grains  

Why so blue?
Do you miss your fluff-fickle friends? 
I’ll spend the day with you
You can put on a fashion show
Try on every nuanced dress in your closet 
Strut like you’re the backdrop of our passions
The sandbox of our dreams
I’m great at ooohing and aaahing
You can tell me stories
You’re a master of the playful
A poet of the roses
We’ll spend the time drinking in the sun
Toast the stories where you mic drop that colorful language
Later don your diamonds
And pitch the dark tales
The quiet ones with haunting sound effects
I’ll even sit with you during that hour of sorrow
When the truth gets dewy-eyed    
I’ll tell you that tomorrow is another day
Tell you to smear yesterday’s cares into the dawn’s finger paint
Tell you to remember your power
Your glory
Your oh-so-magnificent light    

“Wait!” I jumped out of the truck and sprinted down the driveway. “There are 7!”

“7? How? Why?” He was just as surprised as I.

The 2 of us stood there, doors ajar, engine running – in the early March snow, when it’s way too cold for anything to grow, 109 collective years of life experience and 6 college degrees between us – and counted them (still half-smashed under the wall) out loud, together.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7.  

Then silently returned to the truck and to our daily reality, bewildered.

Because the daffodils were there when we moved in and there were always 2 or 3 white and yellow flowers, never more.  Well…except for the years we planted more bulbs, which was always a monumental waste of time and money.  Or after the concrete wall was built directly on top of them during the pandemic and just one.single.daffodil popped up the following year.

But without any intervention on our part, and after 20 years, the floral equilibrium spontaneously reset to 3X+1.  And it felt off, ominous.  Like a rip in the space-time continuum, a glitch in the matrix.

There must be a lesson to be learned from those daffodils, but what?
Seven wonder(ful daffodils) of the ancient world
Seven day-ffodils of the week
Seven continents (of daffodils)
Seven daffodils road
Seven deadly daffodils
The house of the seven daffodils

In the Garden of Eden for Seventeen Minutes and Five Seconds
by Marianne Peel  

She grabs my hand
and guides me down the narrow passage
to her basement art studio.  A whole wall
floats an ocean of psychedelic acrylic creatures,
jitterbugging seahorses,
Texas-two-stepping star fish,
all between the borders of cinder blocks.  

Let’s smoke a joint, she tells me.  

And I remember being in another basement                         
in 1975, just after Saigon fell. Choppers lifted
whoever pushed their way to the front
up and out of the red clay of Vietnam.
From a couch with broken ribs, we watch
the rooftop ascension
on 60 Minutes.  

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida grinds
on the turntable.  A dizzying riff on a loop,
spiraling between our smoke rings.
Eddie and I make out.
Our adolescent limbs fumble,
ferreting out whatever innocent skin
we can find.  
During the two-and-a-half-minute
drum solo by Ron Bushy, Eddie tugs
on the fringe of my cutoff jeans.
Unravels me
as he runs his fingers along the edges
of my embroidered peasant blouse.                                       
Fueled by this rock n roll that feels
so much like a hymn, I watch
the iron butterfly of me
shimmy out of its cocoon,
abandon its weight,
take flight to the cob-webbed rafters.      

Eyes red. Strained. Too sore.
TV static. Late night ghosts
on the radio.

Someday I’ll Love CIS White American Men…

Perhaps when they closely read Louis L’Amour and
pay closer attention to the pursuit of bullies and
less attention to the gunfights.

Perhaps when they closely read Larry McMurtry and
pay closer attention to the needs of others and
recognize that leadership is more than pointing the herd.

Perhaps when they closely read James Wade and
pay closer attention to knowing themselves and
realize that self-love is the first step to becoming a real man.

It’s all I have to bring today— *   
   this and my open palms.
This and my palms, upward held, and the dew   
   and all the wild bluegrass roots.
And June poems writ in early morning  
   our red-feathered couriers will deliver—
dropping them in cornfield rows   
   to scroll across the earth. This and my open
palms and all the honey-scented tulip trees
   that shade our old Kentucky homes   

so we can weep no more
   (well, perhaps, at least)   
weep no more today

*title/first line from Emily Dickinson’s poem
of the same title, inspired by her verse.
With a nod to Stephen Foster.

(a golden shovel with lines from “Poetry” by Diane Seuss)

Sliding through farmland just south of Lake Michigan, no
words can sketch the enormity of ‘hyperscale’; does it matter,
what’s lost? Nameless creeks, corn tassles, red-winged blackbirds, the  
breathy loam suffocated in its sleep? Here cricketsong lost to awful
shriek, an empire of darkness spewing terrible music,
inescapable dirge playing night and day; the groan of
gigawats greedily gulped. Or maybe it’s the
aquifer’s shudder, or beauty’s death rattle,
sonic ghost coming close,
closer.

A yellow No. 2 pencil and a crumpled pink notepad —  Corral disorder into a list – groom dogs,  wash dishes,  read Moll Flanders.  Mow, sweep, mop, weep.  Use Philips head screwdriver on monthly budget:  twist utility costs into level billing: predictability comforts.  Strings strung into a line of ability – unaided walking, self-reliance of scrubbing the toilet, cleaning the refrigerator, poop scooping the yard.  Wrap that string round and round to disguise dotage of vision with gratitude for audioboooks. Camouflage the thready core of uncertainty with physical therapy,  Gabapentin, ice packs, traction, Ultra Strength Tiger Balm on the right shoulder. A jungle of twist ties clutters contents, hides items I need – corkscrew, can opener, tape measure,  my confidence caught in the tangle.  That messy rainbow of wire must go —  worries tossed into black plastic garbage bags and hauled to psychic dumpsters. I discover a bundle of red, yellow and blue cable ties: attach tomato vines to the fence,  bird feeder to its pole, a blue tarp on the woodpile.    Espalier mulberry branches,  divide frustrations into stems:  wrestle Zoom links,  mow lawn, weed garden, trundle trash to the curb.   

Be wary of zip ties cuffing wrists to indecision.  

1
coffee shop
bursting with color
art explodes
everywhere her
exhuberance 
lives on  – Third Street

2
Devine Hip Hop
King his beats vibe
for justce his
heart breaks for kids
his mission saves

3
Jack lives under
a railroad bridge with
sleeping bags
and blankets…I leave
chocolate bars in his lair

4
rapscallions and aging
pirates
celebrating life and lust
music and booze
Thursday Night Live

5
the sign says
“Immigrants Belong Here”
Carnegie Center
where writers teach
…and thrive

    ~circa 2001 

that look just like goose necks standing
in a gaggle at the top of the steps. 

The necks of geese in basketball shirts and 90’s 
boy band haircuts. Jelled bangs. Bowl cuts.

Was this beauty or money?

A cotillion of boys who look like water fowl
gathering before the first bell, near the doric columns.

Was this beauty or having
a dad who coached a sport?

These long limbed boys laughing their faces
turned up toward the morning sun before school.

Was this having a dad who
had a sense of humor?

Was this having a dad?
Was this beauty?

These tanned, puka-shelled boys honking
at the nonsense words they made up

to say hey, this is our flocking
flock, you motherflockers.

Was this teenage heartthrob Johnathan Taylor Thomas
and Josh Hartnett? Was this living

on the edge of a golf course
or next to horses on a farm?

When the bell rings they take to the
halls, a flyway, a breeding ground,
a resource-rich habitat. Ancient. Cyclical.