An August Hawk
  (for our times with Gus Ben-David)

Unwelcome is mid August,
  as the cricket chirping starts,
And our Robins of red breast,
  who sang cantatas to the blue sunrise,
  who for long summer days danced about our yards,
  gathering moustaches of wriggling worms
  to stuff in their begging young ones gape
  even after they had grown as big as their parents,
Have you noticed?
They have flown, all gone
  and lonely in the place of their chat
  sing just the white noise of green grass cicadas

It drapes an autumn pall to see
  what for common knowledge we mistake,
Birds never fly North in Summer,
  they learn to follow for it, that collective annual odyssey
  for which they flock in January
More the pity, none go South in winter,
  the young must learn fly for it

In a seasoned adirondack, upon an autumn deck
  I was chilled by an angry screeching sound,
  a sound most people hear only on TV 
  as a Bald Eagle flies by
I assure you,
  no reputable Haliaeetus ever screeched like that
  for none of their pride would ever demean to be mistaken for what I heard 

That, to my birding ear, was one rusty crank,
  an elder righteously pissed off red tail hawk
  who, like an antique New England Farmer
  with his practiced Yankee swears
  was sounding off at someone, and quite rudely about it

I spied him on that bald a dead branch,
  his perk chest feathers puffed,
  hump shoulders meanly ruffed,
  and his face a scorning mask as he yelled again
‘Key-Yaarhhh!’

At whom in a backyard tree, I heard
  ‘peeped’

She’s begging
  I see it every year
Needy in her time of trial, she found one whom might hear her plea
  as if to say, ‘Uncle?’




I pity you, young Hawk,
  you never read about migration in school
  the parents you knew, who once showed you all
  who fed you since the egg,
They have flown, and you’re alone,
  grown, yet abandoned with the mind of a bird child
That common knowledge, the instinct,
  was not what you were taught

Can one balm the cruelty
  of a one once welcomed stranger?
We all learn

Watching me, watching her,
  and having seen enough to despair of the both of us
The rustic old raptor jumped off,
  winging on towards the Southward glow, where
  his crow plucked tail blended to the sun’s decline

I plan to buy new leaf rakes!

Yet hours after hours, even past the dusk
  I heard the fledgling beg,
  to the quiet trees, the passive clouds
  and all the neighborhood’s closed doors

No one answered her

The Luna Mist

The Luna Mist
When first I started writing this, I didn't intend it to be so Pirates of the Carribean-y.
But yes, it does help to read it with a Captain Barbarrosa voice.

The Luna Mist 
Unfurls the moon her high Earth rakes,
  she sails the nightly sky
Her cruise a silent waveless trek
  the zodiacal she ply
And don’t ask if she frigate be
  or could she be a bark
She’s a pallid powdered bloodless corpse
  a’fore the diamond dark

Excepting tarred and chapped deck hands
  there’s no Man in the Moon,
And as all ships, even them men named,
  her troth you’ll learn too soon,
That hulks a Grand Seafaring Dame
  not found on scrolls of fame
The Luna Mist, by blackfate kissed
  God fear you know her shame
There be no port she calls a home
  in olde world or in new,
A cursed Flying Dutchman, she
  a lorn, a curst, a scorn

She’ll cut a broadside when she’s full
  as once a month she’ll do,
A left or right lee crescent when
  she’s bow or stern to view,
As she runs the fires of hell
  she cuts right through the sun!
Where she’ll discharge her spectral crew
  to the Devils forge and chains
And next could she return for you
whence thirty days have reined?

From Earth it’s plain the sun does rise
  the stars they timely set
And gravity, as one can see
  from Earthly force begets
For Faith and Science I see proves
  it’s not our World that moves,
The Heavens stroll in fixed grooves
  like clocks divinely let

May I feel smug on God’s green Earth?
  here’s Heaven plain to me
And I am sure I’d not prefer,
to sail that Luna Sea,
Yet when Soul’s sundial’s shadow’s long
  may be that purgatory,
To haunt Miss Luna with chapped hands
  condemned upon night’s sea?

No Song Sparrow

No Song Sparrow
Prologue – For no reason I can fathom, I woke this morning with a song on my mind.
Coffee on the porch, and then…

No Song Sparrow
Upon a bird bath   on our lawn
  a sprite Song Sparrow lit
He drank a taste   and turned his waist
  but never did he sit
Then I could see   not like was he
  adorned as other birds,
His rump was rounded,   in a stump
  no tail in other words

I asked him
  Happy Song Sparrow,   tell
  me of what do you sing?’
He said
  I have no tale to tell,
  no story do I bring,
I fell out of the sky one May,
  a brown and striped thing,
I’ll return back   on high one day,
  a simple gracious being,
But of the time   these dates enfold,
  a life time in between,
I have not got   a tale to tell
  I can’t sing of a thing.

He took off on two splashing wings,
 our discourse at an end,
I watched him rise up to the skies,
  then to a tree he wend

For tho’ he did   not sing a note
  while he stood in our dish
Yet by my word,   I loved that bird,
  what burdened he, my wish
For he knows no   affairs of Man
  how we keep our estate
Tho’ for his simple   minded care
  a few short years his fate

He was a bird, and in a word
  a better man than me,
Yet as a man, I’ve time to plan,
  Corrupted as I be

Patrice

Yes, 2008 was 6 years ago, yet I really do still have dreams like this.
 
PatriceAct One

I still have dreams about Patrice,
Telephone service call stress dreams,
Where clients make irate demands,
Then new trainees won’t follow plans,
And none of my solutions stands
When management barks on down me
Unreasonable commands

But you don’t know Patrice.
She was a big girl, a Southern city belle tower,
  and no broad shouldered simple brick shithouse either.
Of class, all steel and stone and opaque glass windows,
  she stood double digit stories at the corner of Broad and Cash,
She was so high a handy mans spirit level proved her swagger.
  as she cast her ominous shadow over the race for cash,
  that rat race that scrambled on below.

She was a multi service consumer bank,
  with a step back block head
  and antenna wire hair.
In a mumu.
That was Patrice.

Her stature daily would wax and wane
  by the inflating or deflating bids and calls
  of the options and mortgage traders of Wall Street.
On good days she stood tall at $ 57/share,
  such as when another lessling merger would 
  send crawling new vassal craven offices
  whole floors mounting and scandent up her outer walls.
Sometimes they were grafted on,
  but often just consummately masticated
  into her great conglomerating halls.
Yet on a bad day, say when profits missed,
  she could crash diet all the way to $ 52/share,
  a dance of binge and purge driven by
  the ask and ask with no bid and ask again
  of those same black and white computer keyboard minstrels of Wall St. 

Of course, eventually, at that price, with the weak hands out,
  all trustworthy brokers on the street knew she was value priced, and,
  while tardy but business punctual, would press those bids of assurance again,
  and Patrice, like a weight lifter pumping iron
  would once again raise the bar back to her mean, her price,
  at $ 55/share.

A trustworthy broker, you ask?
We thought them trustworthy.
We trusted them.
We trusted them to be brokers.
We weren’t oxymorons at Patrice.

Yes, really, we did.
We all talked like she was alive.
Often answers to tough issues were
‘We’ll have to ask Patrice,’ which meant
  everyone involved didn’t want to be,
  all of us feared ever decide a damn thing.
Thus, ‘We have to bump it up to Patrice,’
  meaning that corporate home office,
  where also either no one had the authority to make a decision,
  or those that did didn’t want the responsibility and pushed back,
  irresolute in their suspensiveness, with a timid
‘Well, I think we’ll need a little more information on that.’

And there from comes that horned bed bug,
  that diabolic insect who knaws
  my nightly slumberous thoughts, twisting
  my unresposing sleep into those horrid dream stress top knots.
  by her boring earworms of scorn, 
  and her sursurrant wet willie tongue, such, even now,
  still, in my sleep, murmurs Patrice.
In a mumu.

Intermission - (don’t get up)
Act II

You may ask, what were her business plans?
Patrice’s drug of choice was usury,
  and the worse it got the more she’d need
  and the more she’d need the worse it got,
  until no fix could fix her fix.

As no borrower of reasonable means would pay her fees,
  she sent her minions to missionize in the ghettos,
  where the underclassed crawled on knees
  and mendicated "Missy Please,"
  to monetize their racing rat subsistence.

To push her plan we waived her fees,
  we would take zero down with ease,
  and postpone compound interest ‘till
  they were compelled to borrow again
  to cover the deferred interest bill.
Then that’s when we'd offer the payday loan…

All scrambling just to pay up on the first.
  which all just made all problems worse.

From there we fed Patrice just like any junky.
She was a wheeling dealing dervish
  lost in debts death tornado,
  for with the more easy loans we wrote,
  the more her credit ratings swirled,
  and then street spooks wrote revised reports
  on the outlook for our troubled girl.

A meeting of the directors was called,
  all the board just shouted around,
"…We need more cash to boost our margin… "
"…We need to cover all the failed loans we wrote…"
"…Which means we need to write more loans…" 
"…Which means our ratings will continue to plummet…"
"…Which means putting more pressure on our margins then…"
"…Which means… we need…"
(all together now)
"…MORE CASH…!"

If Patrice had been a dog she’d a et her tail.

And then, one crisp fall morning, on the first of the month,
  a borrower, whose name was Eponymous Note,
  was asked by his banker, ‘Can you pay?’
And he coughed.
Not yes, not no, Mr. Note just coughed.

Seconds later, through the electronic lightspeed of program traders
  New York heard the cough, and the traders pressed the ask.
Patrice’ great stature quickly slid, 
  forcing more to cover and so press her on the wane,
  untill soon, by Friday noon,
  she was waiving her arms and heaving to,
  like an inflatable waving arms sales puppet,
  not tumbling, but orderly sliding irretrievably down
  the pig slop sloping trough of financial disrepute.

By 1pm we were shocked to see,
  on a flashquote quote – it was her!
Dimute, mousely, nearly shrouded in the pink sheets, it was her!
I yelled aloud ‘It’s her, Patrice, quoted at 69 cents per share!’

I think we could not think despair,
I think we just not thought,
We stared.

By 2pm a Fed matchmaker had flown to town,
  and quick a shotgun suitor was found.
He was a west coast conglomerate, named Colossus-Midas Group,
  who, in a perverse reverse dowry,
  offered $ 1.69 a share for his vitiated bride.
And the auctioneer banged ‘Sold.’

Colossus-Midas, known by us as ‘Mr. Group,’
  determined quickly he could not turn underwater mortgage holders
  and the over stretched paycheck junkies into gold,
So, with disdain for our former ‘clients,’
  he strode roughshod over those neighborhoods and municipalities,
  stamping foreclosure notices on the overdue borrowers
  blocking their sun with his titanic shadow
  and left them all pinched out,
 without even the hope of a paycheck loan when we closed the payday shops.

Next, Colossus-Midas strode over us to,
  having met with his ‘integration’ team,
  our operations were merged with theirs,
  which meant they merged our work with theirs
  and promised us good references.

And as for her? Patrice?
You must understand, now she’s very short.
So small, in fact, a CEO’s son mistook her for an action figure,
  until his Dad told him,
‘She’ll see no more action, Son.’

Nevertheless, today still she shows up daily
  for work at Colossus-Midas each weekday morning,
  indignantly punctual at 8:30.

And her boss is that same CEO, where,
  in his office, between a glass shard sales trophy
  and a playskool toy helicopter, which,
  on last years ‘Take Your Son To Work Day’
  was left there by that very same CEO’s son,

there,
  antenna crestfallen,

Patrice sits,
  on a shelf,

In a mumu.

Cats have places

Don't be fooled by the picture of Fluffy.
This secret was revealed by Max, who has his place in the dining room, before the cabinet where I keep my Brandy.

Cats have places

Cats have places that they go
Some where we don’t, some where we know

Those secret pockets on the floor
Behind a chair, hid by the door

Would I could so sequester me
When pesters tell me who to be

Could I would hie my secret shelf
And find whom I’ll be by myself

Six Bouquets

I've been working this one, on and off since October.
Let's hope with time and rewriting, and composting, something worthwhile may come.


Six Bouquets

A remembrance of a picnic day,
  Springs timeless scent of flowers,
Wild daisies and monkshood, you stood,
  in a dirty old milk bottle,
Which, with chafed hands you braided
  Into our new love’s wattle.

‘It’s just a mat of dried old flowers.’
‘That was your first bouquet, when you ever met me."

Cream pastel roses, held by hand,
  your matching boutonniere,
they complement my spotless dress,
  and accents in my hair,
which my chaste hands forsook, once blessed,
  and tossed to sisters fair.

‘They’ve turned all brown.’
'That was my bridal bouquet, beautiful, I held it on our wedding day.’

Twelve scarlet reaching tulips whom
  you beg me bend and kiss,
each petal pursed in a cupids bow
  a token of our bliss,
And future, these, and our years past,
  of which we reminisce.

‘They’ve been pressed in this book for ages.’
‘They’re still my sweet Valentine!’

All baby blue and tightly rolled,
  it’s plain that flowers they are not,
five bibs, three cloths, a blanket, and
  a onesie, in a pot,
ten woolen faux fleurs given for
  the breath our baby’s got.

‘He wore those out before he was two, or else we gave away.’
‘They were a lovely present, a blessing when our son was born.’

You woke up Sunday morning, and
  crept out, like all you men,
you picked and bought them, and that card,
  bringing our son along, and then
you made him give me them.
  Now listen boys, I know!

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he grew up and moved out years ago.’
‘But I do miss my mothers’ day bouquets.’

 A double ended lily spray,
  fern trimmings laid with lace,
by neither flute nor vase were bound,
  but gleamed by heavens grace,
though they were lain upon the ground,
  when you laid me to rest.

‘Well, now they’re cemetery trash.’
‘But you did, you laid them on my grave.’

My Dream of August 5th

My Dream of August 5th
(in awakening to the centenary)

After marching to the front
  We began at digging trenches,
  Six foot was deep enough.

In the morning we mustered for target practice
  with the Bosche, who marched faster and shot straighter than we,
  and earned their winning score.

So we went first.
  Ten of our men lay down where they’d dug,
  and ten more of us without ceremony buried them,
And our Mothers cried, and our Nation mourned,
  for who shall first expire of boys?

Then next the Germans took and lay down ten of theirs

  in their own earthen works,
  with ten more in their turn to bury them
And their Mothers cried, and their Nation mourned,
  for who first shall expire of boys?

Upon our right we met brown Tommy,
  who joined us in the digging game,
And their Mothers cried, and their Nation mourned,
  for first who shall expire of boys?

From east at the Swiss border, to Lux and Belge,
  and even in the channel at low tide,
  then back again, and back again,
  and back again,
 the wonder,
  of who shall expire first of boys?

From Algiers and Egypt, India and ANZAC,
  even pasty doughboy Joe arrived by boat
And all Mothers cried and the whole earth mourned,
  for hoping,
  of whom shall expire first of boys.