How the hell is one suppose
To write some every day
I use emotions – not by rote
To write what I must say
So I’ll try it one more time
Put feelings down in words
But I doube there’s something there
I’m void of songs and birds…
Not that songbirds ever where
Or birdsongs sang to me…
Though of course there was this time
One sang in harmony
I was sitting on the porch
Wondering if I could
Sing a song like long ago
And if I could, I would
So I picked up my guitar
And held it on my lap
And strumming very gently
I sang of this and that
Next I sang a song I wrote
Of sadness far above
About a man I knew for years
And unrequited love
Than a mockingbird flew down
To a tree above my head
Opened up his little beak
And sang of what I said
We sang of love together
That mockinbird and I
And when I stopped,that little bird
Flew into the sky
Grandaddy’s fixing a snack
“What are you making?”
Peanut butter with honey.
“That sounds really good to me!
Do you want some too?
Mine was put on hold for him.
(Serve liberally with toast.)
Baptised
The old-fashioned way
Full submersion
In a fishing creek
I wore my bathing suit
Under my clothes
The preacher wore waders
Though I lived on my own
My mother thought
To bring towels
What was black in evening’s riff
now blazes mahogany
in sun’s stream.
The angular head that grew
bat wings for ears
at midnight
now emits absinthe
two beams brighter
than afternoon.
And what becomes apparent
as day traipses along
is the spine sprouting feathers
a deep green—you can call it
ocean grass jade—
but there it is widening
and lengthening until it surpasses
spine and tail and is overlaid
with indigo eyes.
You call them eyes.
Cat unimpressed
with the reaches of language
opens this new tail
that shuts out light and shade
and objections.
