Posts for June 7, 2021 (page 4)

Their harsh chatter brought me to the surface
of reluctant waking this morning.  

I thought they were part of the dream
that lingered like a mysterious odor,  

but when I raised up on my elbow
and opened the blinds, there they were,  

strutting the city roof like princes,
their inky swadde, royal robes of the realm.  

They regarded me as a pardoned felon.
Nearly naked, what else could I do but stare back?  

I thought after my shower
they would have moved on,  

but they had settled in like squatters.
What omen descended?  

All day I walked gently, afraid
of breaking a leg or running into an open door.  

Made sure my money was safe in the bank.
No one had stolen my car.  

I checked their pedigree online,
a random clutter of legend and drama.  

One site claimed the dead travel the world as crows,
not as gloomy harbingers but as reminders of those lost.  

Just in case, I walked out onto the balcony,
faced their dark confusion, and waved.  

Garden plants
doused in rain
droplets,
vines creeping
up the trellis,
sweet earth
tender
beneath my feet,
damp soil
sticking to
my toes
as I leave
shallow footprints
down the rows.
Pluck
Snap
Crunch
Munch
Yum!
Nothing like a
late spring
sugar snap pea
snack.

Sound like tissue building
back, crystallizing and crunching and re-
crystallizing, like ears straddling
water –
laughter before you pull us both
under. Or if we could hear
insect legs tapping bark,
bodies arching and folding
into spaces needing. 

Sound of sweat slipping under adhesive,
ease when we tore each other’s band-aids off.

I shut mine and think of yours

None the same

Each pieces of art

A way into the world

And a way out

Open or closed

Our imagination finds a way

To influence them

Beauty or pain

They sob a story

It’s where we see

Each other most

The door to the soul,

So I’ve heard.

Home is the porch with table and chairs

Where we sit and talk about all our cares.

Home is the door to the Tardis, where time

For being yourself is a state of mind.

Home is the smell of incense and tobacco

Wood working and flowers, a dog and the cats, too.

Home is the counter where love sits and ponders

Where voices and ideas enter and wonder.

Home is leftovers and beer, coffee and wine,

Some folded laundry, is this yours or mine?

Home sounds like laughter, grumping and song

With young and old voices, some soft and some strong.

Home is a blanket draped on a chair

Balloons on the floor and shoes on the stair.

Home is the craziest sane place to be, where

Love is the answer and you are the key.

Home was once just a house where you lived

                                          Now home is the love and the heart that you give.

For Rob
By Kelly Waterbury

saw my first, real fireworks in college
until then the local VFDs, and Shriners tried
but that was then, before laws changed
probably before you could get
the good stuff
don’t know why I’m thinking this now
other than I’m on the old home place porch
after-rain sun streaming down the holler
and it’s warm, July warm
and it’s like I remember after school let out
trees fully leaved, hay needing cut
the rites of summer beginning
and after Decoration Day,
the next milestone, Fourth of July
don’t remember any picnics,
maybe a lake visit, and sparklers
firecrackers only when family came in
from Ohio, or Indiana, or back from beaches
so, it wasn’t until later, as a twenty-something
that I stood under a summer-dark sky
to gasp at the sheer power of explosive
sparks, showers of glowing metal dust
and reverberating booms
that I understood the word
firework
a word that seems at odds with
this June evening
even as I grow
expectant

Worries cloud my mind
as yet another family elder
falls to failing health.
Aunt calls, bewildered, cries
Why have you forsaken me?
My heart twists, regrets that I’m
500 miles away from home. 

In public, he always gently
rests his hand on the
small of her back, just
under her shirt.

A secret love code. 

Today
his hands remain
           in his pockets.

Strewn across your apartment

is eighty plus

years of life.

Broken down and

boxed up is

what is left for you,

what you can fit,

what you can keep.

Old hands

pluck memories from

piles and boxes

trying to sequester them

and save them.

Old mouths

take tangents

in their story’s

to memory’s of

those passed

Old eyes

look sad

over moving boxes

but happy

at the plane ahead.

Driving east along Old River Road
Following the bend of the Ohio
We drove 20 miles southeast of Cincinnati
Where the land becomes quiet,
Towns hibernating like the brown bears who used to fish here,
Waking only to explosions of industry,
A last call for prosperity.  

New Richmond has made good her vistas.
Where once she built steamboats
She watches passing barges from the Riverfront Cafe
Where waitresses serve bottled beer
And pulled pork sandwiches.  

Route 50 grows wide in places,
Over its cement flows rubber in roaring currents
Mocking the waterway’s silence.
Upstream the roadway’s 2 lanes trickling past
Boarded up buildings, white clapboard,
Grand mansions standing idle
Waiting for their master’s return.  

Sometimes the spring coaxes the river to swallow her,
Leaving behind slime and sorrow
That covers verandas where once
Fathers of industry and abolitionists
Crossed their legs and sip Kentucky bourbon.  

But on these shores of wildflowers and oaks,
She watches fish jump,
While barges pull prosperity past her.
Flatboats grown as long as the river is wide.
Old River Road rumbles under rubber and steel
Of travelers and traders carrying their wares downstream.  
Two hundred years has not changed this passage,
The flight from the Ohio’s rising and falling,
The sloshing of boots in silt and sand,
While shoveling it from Town Hall’s steps.  

Will New Richmond wake and join the caravan,
Or will she close her eyes,
Gently rocked to sleep in its wake.