It looks like a snapshot

from our vacation last year

to the recreators’ faire

in the next shire over,

where experience teaches

how to ignore cameras.

Except for Maggie Clinton,

rightmost of the seated “girls”

(all of them adult women),

unable to ignore the camera,

or else its handsome holder,

down through the centuries.

Yes, dear Maggie, you’re seen.

If the superstitious can fear

that cameras can steal souls,

then why should young suitors

fail to understand the truth:

A woman’s eyes steals hearts.

(after the circa 1890 photograph, “Girls Skaning Mussels,” by Frank Sutcliffe)

In my fortieth year, the apocalypse
began to complete itself, even though
the younger ones tried to stop it,
ones older that we were had already
dug the pit we all were falling into.

i’m not wise, but at one time I was
considered pretty, and old ladies
in markets used to pinch my cheeks
but I think it was just because my eyes
were blue. that was also a pretty
troubled time to be alive but I didn’t know
it yet.

my children will remember more bad air days
than good, have barely had a chance to look
at the stars. their childhood covered with a viral
overload, laminated haze. when they play outside,
they built forts like I did thirty years ago.
I also hid a knife in my pocket, learned how
not to slice off my thumb. a sharpened stick
is a sharpened stick, in any decade.

at the mall we go to eat sushi, see soft children
and soft adults ride up and down the escalator.
the food gets delivered to us on a conveyer belt
and we order more than we can eat, wash it down
with melon milk and sweet plum juice
the eel is especially tender, my son says.

outside, the new year ticks over like a metronome,
and we wander back home a different way we came,
shivering under the streetlights but hugging each others
shoulders, wondering together if the japanese bathhouse
is open, the pools still hot. 

The old creek would flood into the shallow bottom 

spring is slow to warm this year,

                                                                  so the wildflowers sleep a bit longer.

                                        they fight the urge to crack themselves open;

                                                                                                   they resist the temptation

to peek through the soil’s soft surface,

                                                                                   to stretch for the sun,
                                                                                                                                 

                             
                                                     to sway in a whispering wind,

                                                                                                                    because–

                                                                                    they know

they cannot be tamed. 

Where is happiness?
Is it in a smile?
Is it in a hug?
Is it in a kiss?
It is in something I missed.

Where is happiness?
Is it in a beautiful sunset?
Is it in the sun’s early rising?
Is it in the moon’s glow?
It is in something I would like to know.

Where is happiness?
Is it in the innocent laughter of a child?
Is it in the warm sugar cookies Grandma made?
Is it in the untrue tells of Gramps younger years?
Is it in somthing that I fear.

Where is happiness?
Is it in only my dreams?
Is it in only my prayers?
Is it only found in others?
Is it only in my drouthers?

Where is happiness?
When you find it, call me.

Polly Porcupine played piano,
Alex Alligator added accordian,
Danny Donkey danced,
Sally Snake sang–

PADS performed pure poetry,
painting pretty pictures–
porch performance perfection!

There are birds
who’s job it is
to feed other birds

Parents, of course 
dropping appropriate nutrition 
into yellow lined
demanding mouths

and birds at feeders
who toss seeds 
to friends and foes below 

Do they throw the rejects
not worth their effort?
or the prime ones?

do they count-
‘one for me- three for you’?
or is it, totally 
random?

Ground birds clamour
happy and fat

Some seeds escape
-sprout
Sunflowers and thisel

Those days when laundry dried on the line,
I never minded making the beds. Sheets
baked in the sun drank in the summer

soaked up the scent of ripe tomatoes,
bouquet of drying hay, took on the colors
of changing skies and passing clouds.

Sometimes, a brief shower rinsed
them again. In second drying, they
added undertones of petrichor.

Line sheets were crisper than dryer sheets,
more spine and personality. With them,
making the beds became play. 

I tugged corners straight, smoothed wrinkles,
grabbed handfuls of top sheet in each hand,
snapped it out, set it sailing, to arc

then settle soundless as new snow.
I slid pillows into cases, heard 
their sighs as they arrived back home. 

A. Two because one is from Virginia
B. None because they get caught
C. This is no joke
D. Three

black-clad chants
rebound
from courthouse walls