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