Christmas Afternoon

 Christmas Afternoon

Is the white bearded senility with age

That rounds out the raveled year

  With whom and wherever we hold most dear

Before that sleep which wakens queer

  In a wassailing for Spring

Cold and wet, the wassailing for Spring

Christmas is the time for bone aching

Sedentary, watching the fireplace like a Tv set 

  Complaining how the wine isn’t as good as last year

When last year’s wine wasn’t so good either,

   Just as this year’s memories aren’t selected yet

And how many memories

  We’ve yet to forget

Merry Christmas my dear, 

  Bar the wassail cold and wet

Wintergreen

 Wintergreen

Christmas is a blue sky cloud

  Which becomes a something new

And now looks new, a new something new

  With a hinting twist of wintergreen

Our bottle brush tree,

  So called as it came to us in a test tube

And is now taller than I

  With arms grown that reach wider 

Is now all slack-a-limp at ease,

  Coated by a drizzle weighted down

Of winter’s white vanilla frosted glaze

  That’s been applied for several days

Leaving me believing in Christmas cookies, 

  Fresh pine mint and sugar powder flavor,

And a fine respite from the Foole Yoole mayhem

  For we to scratch and sniff and savor

Season of the Saw-Bird

Season of the Saw-Bird

Sunny of a Tuesday 

As I sit out on my porch

I won’t take my bird walk today

In a heat wave summer scorch

Years ago I learned to hear 

I know my birds I’m rarely wrong

And watch my wild birds by ear

Distinct as plumage is their song

Except I never heard this one before

Kind of a goes “we-heeeee ..’

Followed by a ring and a buzz

Er – Errrrr – er – errrr- er – er-rent!

   Wing wing wing wing …

From out back the plumber’s house

He renovates old bathrooms

Keeps his shop in his garage

Home with old tools and his brooms

Late July’s the quiet time

Most the Spring birds have nested

Mating songs are over with

Young fledgling’s wings long tested

‘Cause birds don’t fly north in summer

Their migrations commence after these doldrums

  Quiet summer birdless doldrums

Now here again, 

  The season of the saw-bird

So, yeah, 

I know he’s cuttin’ tiles

And that old coot’s no old bird

Still on a summer Tuesday

He’s the only bird I heard

The Rolling Thunders of a Summer’s Empty Nest

The Rolling Thunders of a Summer’s Empty Nest

So this happened yesterday, I noticed it all too quietly, 

Cocked head I listened, and attuned to the raucous silence

Our house wrens both had gone! 

Ago, the slack-water of Spring’s ebbing into summer

Brought in the pair of wee wrens come to claim stake of my rental 

The male stuffed with twigs all three of my hand made nest boxes

No fear of no bears within this little brown Goldilocks, oh no

The female finally settling in the big one on the garage 

Then singing singing singing, a veritable two bird Woodstock

Until next about two weeks in a coarser chatter began 

Harping like a New Years party ratchet, chat chit chit ... 

Intending to warn me away, mostly from the female 

Henpecking her mate to stand his ground with me, pick a fight!  

  And I who put up that nest box too!

That chatter in latter days the only sound that either made 

Until third voices, fae faerie twinkles deep within the box

Told me me warm summers brood patch had worked it’s magic in their nest 

I long for that month, six weeks even maybe while they cheered me 

Or as rude neighbors will, forbade me checking in on their brood

Until today of a sudden, 

   what’s wrong? 

Echos the rolling thunders of an empty summer’s nest

Summer’s heat bereft of chatter, long flown cool cheerful songs 

No tails flicking on the runner string bean trellis. 

No little grubs in beaks tweaking on back step rails

Cantankerous little cuties 

If you see ‘em, tell ‘em I miss 'em.

Neighbors

Neighbors

At a distance I can hear their sounds 

Ghost of a Nana scolding children

Echo children’s shrill return

  “I wanna …”

    “He just …”

      “Do I have to  … ?”

What I know of them comes on the wind 

As is the wind alone makes up my mind

  Mind is wind

No difference despite the inverted squiggle

I think I know where from they come

A street off my street house up one 

  Turn right, two houses from that one

Sight of their play is blocked by trees

I’ve never gone to see them from here

  Would I side with the kids if I did?  

They are what the wind brings to me

Weekends bear the songs of woodworking

Power tools and planes, not the airborne kind

  But the thing that looks like a shoe, makes wood curls

Sounds stronger downwind, thinner when up,

Like naturalists banding songbirds, 

  Caught in nets between my ears

Shall I go see his works?

Happy to hear the clear wind blow

  I decide best I ought not know

Good neighbors make good fences

The Magic Chip

The Magic Chip

First time we brought him to the vet

She placed a little metal chip under his skin

  On the back between his shoulder blades 

Imbued with its specific magnetic frequency

With the wave of her magic wand 

  All his clinical data was born

If you could have a metal chip implanted, 

  Would you?

“No way, I don’t my ‘information’ in there,”

   Funny the God fearing, fear ‘God’

After implanted, the vet waived her wand, 

Made funny faces, - suspense moment - 

  “Ah! There he is!”

We joked his soul lived in that chip

Successive visits, the wand waived on,

“His weight is down, his vitals down,

  His kidney’s acting up”

After he died we got his ashes back, 

  Picking him up

She waived once more the wand over his ossuary,

  “Nope, he’s gone”

When Cat Grew Tired

 

   

  ,

When Cat Grew Tired

When Cat grew tired,

  Felt his concession to an illness

Advancing faster with acquiring age,

  He came to prefer those safer places

Such as underneath my armchair, here 

  Near where I may watch and ward,

Or under the dining room table, its stockade 

  Of fence post of chair legs to thwart the spectral path 

Of whom, under the shroud of soulless night,

 May creep within on padded feet

Unseen despite the vigilance of sight, 

  That thief of gossamer life, who comes

Gone the days you stalked the mouse

  Gone the days you ruled our house

Stay safe within your guarded keep

  Good night sweet cat, 

     I’ll watch, you sleep   

A Two Beetle

A Two Beetle

Two of them appearing on a window

One gold, glowing as fire from the sun

Whose six legs alternate upon the screen, 

No telling where it’s going or has been,

I’d thought these insects all were slate cold gray,

It’s come for warmth to take the sun today

The second, black, is crawling just the same

A six legged oval on the window pane,

Walking tandem along-side its brother

As if the other was its mother

But no - it’s its shadow, dark and clear

Who with the crawling sunset disappears

Ghost Kitten Ramble

Ghost Kitten Ramble

When it is dark he’s colored dark

And when its light he’s lite fur white

He can blend into the sunshine

He hides under blankets of night

With little care for home and lodge

With one eye open sleeps awake 

Attendant on the midnight watch

The other closed asleep he wakes 

He gnaws the hand that feeds him treats

Then licks his five toed barb clawed feet

He’ll never let me pick him up

My ghost kitten, to hold and keep

Not Your Mom’s Day Lillies

Not Your Mom’s Day Lillies

Old Pound Ridge, the kind of town
Mom could just pull over and dig
  A bucket full of wild day lillies
They then waving bye their leaves
  Riding in the summer breeze of our tied open car trunk
And nobody cared
  How’d you think they first got there?

Special, these were those orange ones that
Mom said grew native in the rural Northeast
  Before then only tended to by Adam’s garden bees
And no one ever planted those Asiatic breeds
  Packed and shipped from foreign shores
With spikey fingernail long leaves
  Powder faced like Mandarin Chinese

Wistful, I’ve longed for those lillies by our mailbox
Here in my new home a half-life away,
  Four decades since Mom passed away
And I’m spending this sunny day
  Sorting through packages in a garden store
But these aren’t them from my way back when
  Those times I can’t return again

It’s only a three hour car trip
And then a three hour run back
  But I wonder would our old neighbors today
Call the police seeing me dig up theirs?
  And think too of the tearing buds and leaves
In highway winds at turnpike speeds
  My heart sinks to think of driving back there

To that place by our house on the roadside
Next to where our old breadbox sized
  Yellow painted mailbox stood,
No numbers or ‘RR” laundry markered on
  Just our family name
Where Mom planted those same wild lillies
  I saw her dig up in that bucket

That then rooted and divided in
A crowded plot on the downhill slope
  Below the stonewall to the road
That passed on by those too few years
  Before age rerooted me far from a barefoot childhood

No, they’re not Mom’s day lillies
  But memories with love I plant
    Far from their lot in my transplanted city

A Willful Seamstress

A Willful Seamstress

She’d watched enough Netflix, tried writing her lifestyle book
But her mirror kept reflecting her inconsequential looks

So …

Several bandana sized swatches folded over centered coffee filters
They then folded over three times crisp and ironed into pleats

With one large ponytailer set into each folded end
They serving as ear loops sewn into their reinforced hems

That’s what happened when she decided to make a difference
Dozens now, washable, wearable, wash and wear again

No she won’t stand next to med techs as they stand each to their tasks
It’s just they can’t save lives without her clean new homemade masks

Tater Lent

Tater Lent

They’ve grown stubby white fingers
  These leftover spuds that linger
In a wood box in a corner
  Of the basement where it’s cool

Some call them eyes, yet as any-
  One can plainly see they’re blind
Left under this tarp in the dark
  But for the Yankee Cook to find

Time of the year there’s a logic to Lent,
  Most taters from this box were spent
Peeled nightly for a dinner side dish
  Or diced in soup, now I relent

Here’s just enough left for seed stock
  Which if eaten now leaves none for planting
Which reason’s now they’re only borrowed
  And to the earth some must return

That means Lent

… and anyway they’re gone a bit
  wrinkly dried and moldy

Wearing Our Corona Crowns

Wearing Our Corona Crowns

What is this fear?
What is it?

Don’t do that
Don’t touch your eye
Don’t wipe your nose

Don’t go there
Make a little list
  Get what you need, get out
Scurry like mice before the
  Invisible cat as catch can

I will obey all stated guidelines
Please would you do so too?

Masks, wear ‘em if you got ‘em
  The Have-Nots bare their naked chins
While the rest of us look like bandits
  Behind our pretty silk hand-dannas
All Thieves come out to steal
  Friendship

One sneezed and everybody flees

Spring yard children
  Playing in the grass
Moms with carriages
  Barefaced and bold
Girls sit their smiles squinting
  To the Sun
Boys stand watching the girls
  Yet no one goes over there

Some have died
Remember Minnie

Let us not friend fear to live

Daylight Savings

Daylight Savings

Do plants understand Daylight Savings time?
How much daylight have we put in the bank today?

In a sunny window my pet plants swell new shoots
  Set next to last month’s Valentine tulips
They having spent 2 months in the bottom fridge crisper drawer
  So to prompt dark dormancy

They’re naturally from the South

Seems coldier than yesterday
Sun three o’clock settier than yesterday
  Cold nose runnier than yesterday

Clean shoots reaching for outside
  Oh no, not yet little swells

Warm March lights belie frost nights

New Year’s News

New Year’s News

New Years day wakens to a mourning
  of the two newses;

First comes the Baby first born of the New Year,
  born in our city at one or another Hospital,
It’s not the birth of baby new year
  top hat cane and white scarf attired, 
Just a necessitous loaf of pink baby dough
  needy to brood in life’s heat lamp, and tired

Next after the commercial is our first murder,
  who’s a name I did not know, in a place I would not go,
And a knife or a gun on a street somewhere
  so cold and dark alone,
No it’s not the murder of the inoocents,
  just it’s usually an innocent been murderded

Passively every year over coffee it begins again,
  the annual blinkering of horrors that walk our quotidian ways,
The getting up on cold mornings,
  the coming home of dark nights,
Dumb in numb ears the news of the world,
  which I concede I do dismiss -
I wanna care about that -
  I’m tired, tomorrow, I’ll care about that

Until it’s no longer New Year’s,
  yawn four o’clock yawn news New Years day,
And I’m praying, yes praying, think praying,
  cocooned in my own nappy life,
Thoughts and prayers and that pink bread dough baby –
  wrap her up, love her warm,,
Safe from this January world, dark and knives and cold,
  she’ll grow up, she’ll save the world
 
  Please, maybe …