Cat Curious

Cat Curious

That’s curious,
  See - all my shirts
Have a hole
  In the right shoulder,
A little bit before
  the seam,
It needs a close look
  To be seen

I clip his front claws
  Once a month,
It’s possible I missed one,
  Once,
Then when I lay back
  For a rest,
He perches sphinx-like
  On my chest,
Kneading my shoulder
  With his pets,
And soon enough, each one
  He gets

  Huh.
 

Rubber Ducks

Rubber Ducks

Legendary;
A container of rubber ducklings was washed overboard,
Made in China, for children’s hands,
  Soapy in the bathtub,
They bore no food,
  They carried no water
And floated adrift,
  A speckled yellow diaspora,
Tossed about warm foamy seas

After the men with guns put us in the boats,
Out from Viet Nam, to never-land,
  Bouncy on the sea waves,
We had no food,
  We had no water,
We floated adrift,
  Another speckled diaspora,
Without a shore to wash upon

Eight days out something pecked below the gunwale,
Tiny yellow smiley, a childish face,
  Persistent in the sea waves,
It was not food,
  It was not water,
We took it in,
  Come join our lost diaspora,
As we would wish welcomed ashore

Social Media

Social Media

Looking at pictures of young school friends,
They have grown up,
  (Creases) mark the smiles

Their parents are shrunk and wrinkled,
Old crabapples left too long,
  Mine are already gone

  The tragedy is everyday

Turkey Tankas

Turkey Tankas


A dozen flock here,
Hens peck feeding at their grit,
Grand the cock displays

Look at him ruff his tail fan!
His harem has had enough
_

One has a long beard,
Stepping through the unmown yard,
The other one short

These two toms have owned these lawns
Since the hens went off to lay
_

Sweep up a grass stalk,
Beak strips all the seed in one,
He gobbles his friend

“And where is the coyote?”
Four eyes – better to scent him
_

Scaring grasshoppers,
Ruffle run wide five foot wings,
Turkey in the grass

Collecting his lunch is a
Task before the autumn chills

Echo of Xu

Echo of Xu

Orange leaves have not yet fallen in the Charles,
  Though curbside collection is scheduled,
On our ranch house roof nor’easter rains rumble,
  Uneasy is to rest in Watch City,
As I lie, I’ve a longing,
For a home I left longer ago
  Than actually I lived there,
Where my heart remains the age of seven,
And then future was a word bearing promises
  Of releif from childhood stricture,
Rather than fifty-seven, here to
  Look down the lip of the slew
And into the tin-silver chutes
  Of diminishing age

A Remnant

A Remnant

Under a gray sky
  Portending of a September hurricane,
The once green Mantis
  Has turned brown,
Listless in the autumn chill
  As if with leaves soon to fall down

Gone are the gleaming jade
  Eyes of the nymph,
Gone is the second branch on the
  Sunflower stalk
That motionlessly
  Seemed to walk,
Gone too are the two husbands
  You devoured with loving care,
No telling sign on your waistline,
  Your abdomen tapered and spare

Your eggs, lain warm
  In the secrets of August,
Shall safely abide
  Toothless winter’s harm,
But languid in this autumn chill
  Whither, Mantis, are you bound?
How few for you are setting suns,
  Before the earth pulls you to ground 

The Sparklies

The Sparklies

Attempts to look at it fragment in blinks, elusive, phantasmal,
I look around the corner and it moves around the next, 
  It is that light that cannot illumine itself, remains aloof,
That irreducible spark one can neither measure nor find,
Not in the center nor the corners nor the unity of mind,
  That is, this me, who claims identity, these I’s of ours,
Who can claim defiance of asomatous time, concealer of vacant death,
We, who clutch tickets to Heaven, reincarnation, a “rebirth?”
  Or to be lost, unmade, unexistent, alike time before time

And then one day I met the Sparklies

Mowing the lawn, stung by a yellow jacket,
On the calf, annoying, ow, I left the mower
  And pasted baking soda on the wound,
Resting I thought no more of bees, anaphylaxis was not a word,
  Neither I nor my brothers had ever been allergic to anything

A month later, Labor Day, I mow again, knowing where the nest was,
I mowed them over once, mowed them over twice,
  Felt the ground give softer under foot there
And come around the third time - they were waiting,
A circling cone of vigilance, I naïve of danger, 
  And they stung me 5 times,
Panic, running, brushing bees from socks, legs, under a glove,
I removed a detached stinger with my thumbs
  While it pulsed stuck in my shin
 
Countless details too long for metric time
And tedious to re-describe in rhyme

And I lay upon the driveway,
911 having been called,
  Medtechs hovering over,
When there, in the corner of my eye I saw their yellow swarm,
  The Sparklies,
They, the absence of input from senses growing faint,
Twinkling stars and colored bars too peaceful to do harm,
  Well knowing I was going, 
I wondered only in what form I would awake,
With not a moment more for thoughts to make