Posts for June 22, 2021 (page 3)

-After Mary Oliver

You should really try to be good.
You need to scrub the hardwood
on your hands & knees—-it gets dirty.
Do not think of yourself like a child’s stuffed animal,
your loving is heathenous.
Do not complain of your sorrow, I’m sure I have it worse.
Maybe, one day, the world will just stop spinning.
Yet for now, the rainstorms just keep pouring & pouring,
flooding the creek banks, saturating the grass
in the yard, mildewing the plywood lying about,
& just making everyone even more sad.
Yet that damn goose just keeps coming through the front door
& talking my ass off even though I’m in bed with a cold.
I’m tired of all these people in the world with their problems,
their big, unimaginable dreams,
howling in my ear like my damn domestic goose,
over & over again….
maybe one day I’ll get some rest.

A bright yellow falls beneath the cracks
Shades stay closed
It gets so hot upstairs in the summer
I bought an open sign 
But it seems like a cover-up
For dreams that my anxiety burned 
Maybe I’ll hang it one day 
The baby’s breath plant uprooted itself 
The other night when storms raged
I imagined it in tea cups and on 
Table cloths far too many times
I haven’t been feeling the greatest lately 
Health has got to be a number-one for me
I can’t die at 28
My memory statistics aren’t looking very good right now
And I want to live with no
Pain if
I’m going to be here
So I’ll open the water
Turn the keys to my car
And spend every moment
I can with you

Why Rhe-utt
STEL-LAAH
     ArMAND, ArMAND

Lassie, oh Lassie
     Here, Rinny
High ho, Silver

      Shair-air-ree, Sherree baby
Louey Lou-ay-ay
      Hang on, Sloopy

Michelle, ma belle
      Hey Jude
Dear Prudence

      And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Bill, I love you so
      Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
      Glow-or-RE-ah
Figaro figarofigarofigaro

       Irene, goodnight-ite
Goodnight, John Boy
      Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, whereva you are

Penny(knock knock knock)Penny(knock knock knock)Penny (knock knock knock)

–

Still weary from a tough year as summer descends,
heat like a presence, like an old friend, sun saturating
these days that stretch out long as afternoon shadows,

and evening rolling in gentle, almost reluctant
to disturb. The sky draws out every last bright note
of sunset, a performer who can’t resist

an encore, and even our depleted hearts
can sense the hope summer brings, the energy
flooding in on the wings of birdsong, the murmur

of insects in the grass. And the flush of green permeating
everything gives a sense, like a promise, that life is stronger
even than our grief.

Sleeping cats
laughing babies

forest bathing
deep red roses

the feel of velvet, the color purple
a lover’s kiss

lavender scent
deep red roses

lacy Valentines, butterflies
cherry flavored anything

lost in a book
creating art

makes the sunshine
in my heart.

-Sue Neufarth Howard

Promise breathes the heartfelt vow of a newlywed
Whispers the innocent commitment of young friends

Promise beams dazzling dreams from a graduate’s eyes
Charms and disarms with burgeoning potential

Until promise stalks a teen with a creepy ring
A trinket of emotional extortion

Nature’s not all
pretty things.
Sometimes, its long 
night with crickets
in one ear
and frogs in the other.
And miles of burned
out trees and dead
brush and cuts on
palms and toes.
And empty deer
carcuses with popped
eyes and flies.
Sometimes, not even
Thoreau could make me
love nature.
I have no nice words
for when nature bares
its ugly face.

I pretend I live in a treehouse
perhaps an interesting practice for someone in my age bracket
more than a bit over forty and most of my type don’t 
dwell in a second story situation like this
and sometimes, well sometimes that fact gets me down
shouldn’t I have something like the lovely lavender cottage I frequently pass
or one of the other scenarios I allow to meander through my mind
should I regret the circumstances which brought me here
or delight in the present
the second I tell myself because why not be positive
I hear kids chattering and arguing and playing and the voices of their adults overriding 
I see, out my window, the replacement flowers I planted on Saturday
I imagine, the next place and then I wonder when
but I refrain
why would I want to be ordinary
a person without a staircase

the cat licks the Funyun dust off my fingers
it’s the salt he likes
and I think, in this October coolness,
maybe that’s all we need:
snacks
companionship
a cold beer (forgot that at first)
and a purpose