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