Tuesday, February 1, 2022

The Ride

It’s the squeaking of the machinery
the arms and levers and wheels,
cables flexing while pulleys spin -

Trundling the sounds of metal and axles
and gears, the smell of hot oil and steam
escaping under the pressure of pistons
and pinions. Ideas aren’t as mechanical,
no. They are worse: the whole mess of
them sometimes humming like the 
heart of a steamship, sometimes 
seizing like the ailing organs
of a derelict riverboat.

You never know which you’ll get,
though, until you prime the thing
and fire it up. Then, as if the sum were
more than the parts, a magic explodes
across the page infused with tears and 
laughter and hopes. Once the vessel
Is moving, for good or ill, it takes 
you along for the ride.

Saturday, September 11, 2021

A Nasturtium: As often happens

As often happens
in the mid-fire season gloom
of September in southern Oregon,
with smoke obscuring the sun

and stunting the growth of so many
plants, a struggling nasturtium
on the back porch

eked out a few green leaves
and an orange flower.

I'd say it brings hope and joy,
but mostly it brings sadness
about what-could-have-been-if:

Not really a nameless discontent.
More of a wishful, wistful memory
of sunny days past when the roses
bloomed fully, pumpkins plumped,
nasturtiums were full, ferns robust.

Saturday, May 9, 2020

More

It’s time's fault
we only scratch the surface
of things we learn.

Only just yesterday I explored
a little more about the
infamous murder hornet.

But I don’t have time
to become a hornet expert,
so my scant research halted,
leaving me somewhere
between Vespa this and
yellow legs that and something
about an invasion along the northern
border of France in 2009.

And that article about maps,
or the one about Viking discoveries
in Newfoundland... forget it. No
time to scratch that surface,

though I long to.

Yes, I do. That’s why
Mr. Sandburg’s Window caught
my attention today. Sometimes
we have to take time to dig more.

I admit - it may turn up little. But
it just may reveal a treasure
that will cast off a voyage
of a lifetime. I’ve got time for that.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

The Beginning of Quarantine

Covid-19 teaching 
is like nothing 
before.

And it started 
today without 
fanfare

from me. Just
some things I
know.

That comfort 
brought me
joy.

So did hearing
from my
students

in short messages,
responses and
questions.

Something hopeful 
being connected 
again.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Winter with Ebenezer

A storm loomed and wind stirred
dried twigs of a leftover
summer plant, its withered tendrils
grasping at concrete and a
praying mantis long since deceased.

It reminded me of ol' Marley. He
was dead as a door-nail.

And so are spent my recent successes.

A new chapter beckons, but the pain
of the present and abrupt end
makes me look more to the corrupted
mantis than the coming spring.

I've already been haunted by
the things I've done.

I paused, that morning, the carcass,
staring back at me, more wraith
than gentle spirit, igniting a
condemning symphony in my mind
accompanying the brittle descent
I'd taken from

many joyous years
odd but manageable recent ones.

I'd skipped to the last ghost, really!
That decrepit exoskeleton a hooked
and aged finger slipping from under
the ragged frock of death's angel
pointing to my doom!

It cannot be! No!

Scrooge's cry has become my own.

If only I could sponge away this writing,
and change these shadows by an altered life!

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Relief

The rain was softer
today. The wind,
warmer. 

I recalled days when
I thrilled to go for a run
in just such conditions.

Because of them. But 
tonight, instead, I 
wish for the soothing
they once brought.

In a poem, 
a reflection,
a thought.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Swallows

Yesterday swallows
danced above the historic city hall
over pedestrian conversations
over diesel trucks hustling
morning men with Rockstars
and coffee to job sites,

over retired regulars on the sidewalk
sipping their coffees remembering
hustling to their job sites.

I, lost among them to the birds, wanted to
forget those things and longed
to remember simpler things like
which swallows these were
and what hatch brought them out.