At first I felt bad
when they pummeled my windshield,
a hundred red-eyed
lives I never meant to take
reduced to guts splashed on glass.
At the pool today,
kids in swimsuits shrieked and plunged
beneath the surface,
shook off small winged assailants
buzzing blindly at their heads.
I watched one sputter
on the water, no longer
caring if it died.
But a man reached in and plucked
it out – better man than I.
Things keep moving forward
with or without our help,
the arc of history & all that.
Sometimes, though, it feels like
we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror,
ignoring the oncoming traffic.
Sure there’s a way forward, sure.
The question is whether we can find it
in time, whether we can get the wagons
uncircled & heading off in the same general direction,
whether we’ll reach the mountain pass
before it begins to snow.
Hiss-pull, hiss-pull—
When dreams spin ‘round inside my silly head
And leave my fingers twitching for a pen
I think on all the people who have said
“I’m captive of the muses once again”
For those who’d laugh, they’ve never felt the plight
When spirit wants, but words cannot be found
When teasing muse, with visions of delight,
To cruel block a writer’s hands have bound
Yet no regrets have I with bargains made
To those whose whimsy changes with the wind
For visions granted, even with hands staid,
Are sustenance to feed this troubled mind
And when the muses do feel in the mood
They lift the block, so I can share such food
Reasonable Doubt:
“The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction for me. Its phenomena showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things.”
I read it again
as if it were dusted with scales,
as if I had antennae.
“What wants to land even briefly
in the page-glade opened
by Nabokov’s net?”
Limenitis arthemis astyanax,
the Red-Spotted Purple —
that southern mimic,
dark-winged as the Pipevine Swallowtail,
wearing someone else’s warning —
a bluff of venom
in the submargins.
And its sibling form,
the White Admiral of the north —
band of frost
like a wound
or a flag.
A butterfly doubled
by geography, inheritance,
hybridized —
a living negotiation
between what warns
and what dazzles,
what survives
and what stuns.
You say,
“I’ve never seen,
as far as I know,
that northern form.”
Which means
it may have passed you once,
unclaimed —
or perhaps
it still waits for you.
Raining cats indoors
which makes sense and could happen.
Indoors changed to dogs,
-doesn’t make sense, won’t happen.
Sounds dangerous and messy.
When trauma happens,
often numbness sets in
that makes it easier to get
through the days
But to experience joy,
it is necessary to let the
numbness go and
FEEL the joy
That is positive,
because joy is a wonderful
part of life, and negative
because you will also FEEL pain
There are moments of grief where
a wave of pain will knock
you off your feet and you
wonder if the joy is worth it
I also think the pain is comforting
at times, because it reminds you
that LOVE was present and that
LOVE will live on, in a different form
I choose LOVE in all it’s forms
