Long con with the crows
murmur assent, harmony of
Kakaw
Flutter of wings and feathers
Swirling, amassed.
Beedy eye,
Unblinking focus
Still below the neck
One gentle reminder/fragile form
A grip and simple twist,
Crumbles in on itself
Lays barren
Gone over twice
Deprived of value
Denied the feast of the many.
Line of vision
Unobstructed in miles
Down the road
Power lines hum
Kakaw
Flutter again
Come in the hour of need
A great and plentiful
Table for none
Is waiting
I spend a little time each day
Before the Sun shows its face,
Speaking sweet words at the flowers
I planted in our backyard’s oft-neglected garden.
Bent over them, shining my cell phone’s light to aim my voice in the appropriate directions.
I practice my intonation,
Even pacing
inflection up.
Dulcet tones
The tapping of the clavas underneath the smooth 2/4 love in my song.
My eyebrows raised,
Loose body language.
Willing them to continue growing.
To grow up safe
Without bends in the stem
To know they are valuable and don’t need to compare themselves to the others.
Each one
Blossoming and arcing towards the growing light.
Each one,
More beautiful than the moment before I shined the unsparing light from my iPhone 11 plus.
Before now,
I would bark out commands
Grow straighter!
Blossom more effectively!
A drill Sergeant
Demanding results without exception.
As you know,
I’ve burned everything I loved
Away from Me.
In the shrill demands
the impatient scowls
The disappointment
That oozed from my pours.
Each has left Me.
You have left Me.
Maybe these flowers I planted,
When You told Me you were leaving, told Me that I kept You down
Under water and struggling-my hand firmly and figuratively on your head-bubbles screaming without interruption,
These things I have tried to talk into becoming something other than the weeds
Of our home’s ruined garden,
Maybe I’ll speak the words in the right combination and unlock my fingers from their collective, and figurative, scalp. They’ll bubble up through the surface and I’ll tell them how sorry I am. How much I’ve learned. How proud I am to have witnessed them grow.
Maybe I won’t fail them
This time.
Dressed for a rain storm on an uncharacteristically sunny day and waddling out to the curb to grab the newspaper and the rubber of my rain boots emits small squeals with every change in foot position and I’m waving at my neighbor who is sitting out front with the accoutrements of a seasoned veteran in the art of tanning lowers her glasses and asks if I’m expecting rain and I smile and tell her not what you’re thinking but yes and she gives me one of those benign head shakes like I’m not supposed to see it but of course I see it because I have the vision of a bird of prey and I’m considering my option to say something but instead I just adjust my rain bonnet and make sure that my other rain gear is still fastened appropriately and nod at her to wish her and her disdain a pleasant day and each step is now a louder squeal I’m not one to show doubt in the face of opposition a war time general stands resolute and grim faced even as their soldiers are chopped apart by the surprise pincer force of a greater foe no we are men and women of some kind of action and that action was preordained long ago and then I hear a crack of Thunder like a deep bellow from a large bear and it begins to rain and as the tabbies and pit bulls fall from the sky and smash through the neighborhood’s houses we’ve spent so much time taking for granted and as my neighbor abandons her temple of the perfect skin tone and runs as a black cat with claws exposed lands next to her and immediately shrieks a warning to get the hell away from it and the houses all around us start to show cracks and holes and fill with the sounds of cats and dogs I’ll nod to myself and think that even I didn’t see this one coming while I side step a Beagle landing directly to my right it begins to yowl as only a beagle can and I look at it sympathetically “me too buddy me too”
Air, a precise note
Tip of the spear.
Crinkling from below
Sun, brilliant. obscured in the over
and undergrowth’s mingling.
A gift near the sunset
at the edge of the year
Shivers of our content
In the gentle bursts of breeze
and the rustling of our soul.
Panorama
of death’s plumage
On display.
Shadows as giants
In the yellow-orange majesty
of soon-to-be gone.
and
Delivery
Is
Guaranteed
On arrival.
Not in the space before it.
Before arrival
The space and time continuum
Bends and moves like
a dull lava lamp,
Lamp extinguished.
The vacuum
Of free space
Travel on roads
Waiting and moving
Into and out of the void.
Cue those sweet,
Goddamn
Pianos
The gentle 1-2
of snare clicks
tap tappa
Tap tatata tat
A rich sub base
Sneaking up through the floor.
Something in the water.
Your package will arrive?
When it does
You will know
It was from us.
Not by the label.
There will be no label.
-Cue the horn blast-
Still,
all is right and everything is in place again
And we just need your signature
-tinkling scales up the high notes of the piano-
the space between has been circumnavigated without the need for dead reckoning in and without running aground in tide pools of great inconsistency.
-sour saxophone bellowing-
Just sign
Dotted line
and we’ll take you right past the chorus
To the way the pieces come together in a final appreciative din and an end that writes itself.
The tree limbs rattle against the wood framed windows.
Wind, warping it’s cries
cascading them around the foundation and frame of the building.
Sky, in shades of blackness and fog, overcast brushstrokes fade out along the fuzzed ring of a lone, distant light. Life outside a frosted fish bulb.
Electricity fails, shadows twist and gel in shapes furnished by the gentle sway of candle lights.
Everything waits
as the wind laughs,
in an otherwise still space.
For now.
