Category Archives: Poem

As Her Majesty Ordains

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As Her Majesty Ordains

An extraordinary show pooch, she was top dog in her class.
Her coat was long and silky and glittered like fine glass.
Her canine teeth were pearly, her tail a lovely plume.
Every eye turned toward her when she walked into a room.

Her master, pumped-up in his pride, gloried in her fame.
Every judge in every show knew her fabled name.
At shows he closely guarded her from every dog she met.
Never took her walking, lest her feet get wet.

Not once had she chased a ball, a rabbit or a stick.
She couldn’t jump in leaves for her coat was just too thick.
Her master feared she’d sully it and he would be the one
who’d pay with time spent grooming her if she had some fun.

But the neighbor was her savior when her master was away,
for he would come into her yard and they would run and play.
Fetching sticks and playing tug-rope and racing through the yard,
she could simply be a doggie and let down her royal guard.

But one day her master came home in the middle of the morning
and caught them in their playtime with nary a pre-warning.
He promptly whistled for his dog to bring it to an end,
casting a baleful look at his pet’s clandestine friend.

But her highness did not deign to come, in spite of all her training.
No matter what her master did, she ended up remaining
close to her only playmate–hoping the yells would end,
but instead her master fumed and shouted at her only friend.

“You hogamadog? I going to steal your cat one day!”
(Did I reveal he was Italian? You know they talk that way.)
And did I say the neighbor had a cat? He did, you know, of course.
(Sometimes when I talk, the cart goes on before the horse.)

But the whole thing ended happily. The neighbor pled his case
and before the day was over, the dog’s master joined the chase.
The neighbor helped with grooming after they all jumped in leaves,
thereby doing in one of the master’s former peeves.

Did I introduce the owner? His first name was Giuseppe.
Oscar was the neighbor, both duplicitous and peppy.
Duchess was the given name of the illustrious bitch
who improved her retrieval once her master learned to pitch.

 

Prompt words for the day are pearl, fumes, hogamadog and glitter.

Then and Now

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Then and Now

That spontaneous body that moved with swish and sway
never quite believed that there would come a day
when spring would turn to sprang and run turn into ran
and movement would become a thing achieved by plot and plan.

Dancing done in memory raises less of a sweat.
When we swim in remembrance, rarely do we get wet.
Every action has two pleasures. The first is when we do it,
but it’s equally fantastic later on when we review it.

 

Prompt words today are swish, body, spontaneous and fantastic.

Locationally Challenged

18 Replies

Locationally Challenged

I’ve misplaced my glasses. Yesterday it was my keys.
If they weren’t attached, I’m fairly sure I’d lose my knees.
Some say I’m absent-minded, others say I am forgetful,
but whatever you may call me, you can bet I’m often fretful.

Whenever I walk through my house, I am forever gleaning
things I’ve lost throughout the week since Yolanda’s last cleaning.
But though I look for hours, my passport just stays lost.
I obsess about it all week long. My dreams are tempest-tossed.

Monday morning, when she arrives, it takes her just a minute
to approach me with her hand held out with my passport in it!
Ironic that though I’m the only one here who can use it,
that I also seem to be the only one who can’t peruse it!

First I lost my laptop and then I lost its mouse.
I looked under the sofa. I combed the whole darn house.
I sought it in the hammock, in the front seat of my car.
It wasn’t on the bathtub ledge, the table or the bar.

Finally, I found it in the last place where you’d look—
on the shelf above the kibble in the doggie nook!
Too many things to think about. Too many things to do.
I simply have to find a way where I can shed a few.

I’ll sacrifice my waistline and a smooth complexion. 
I’ll put up with my creaky bones and energy’s defection.
Just to keep my memory is all that I am asking,
like back when I was young and I excelled at multi-tasking.

 Prompt words for today are misplaced, bet, legendary and glean.

The Kiss-Off

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The Kiss-Off

This incessant waiting clearly is the pits.
Frankly, I am tempted to say I call it quits.
I’ve been standing here for minutes when I’d much rather be seated,
and in spite of the tree’s canopy, I’m feeling rather heated.

The onus is on you, my friend, to tell me why we’re meeting.
You’ve used up your excuses and used up your entreating.
Friends do not do the things you do. They keep your confidences.
They do not carry tales. They come to their friends’ defenses.

You beg to meet just once again and then you show up late?
I rue the day I bonded with such a reprobate.
You have not won me over, in fact, without a doubt,
I fear our friendship’s over. Your test period’s run out! 

 

words for today are canopy, onus, incessant and waiting.

After the Town Reunion, For Jim

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After the Town Reunion
For Jim

Sandwiched in age
between
my two older sisters
and ten years my senior,
he is someone from so long ago
that he seems more myth than actuality.
Yet when he asks me to write a poem
about hummingbirds,
even now, more than a year after the reunion
and sixty years since I had seen him before that,
honored to be noticed,
as little kids are with older kids,
I comply with his wishes.

My first hummingbird days, Jim,
centered around the trumpet vine
that clung to the trellis
on the south side of our big front porch.
It was the side you wouldn’t have seen
as you walked from your house to the grade school
across the street from us,
but it was where
both hummers
and I
loved to hang out.
I lay on the porch on my stomach
on a folded-over blanket,
chin on my fists,
legs crossed at the ankles,
to watch their thrusting flights,
or stood on the concrete sidewalk—
roughened to prevent falls on the ice in winter,
but its numerous small ravines
filled nonetheless with my flesh—
the remainders of knees oft-skinned
while attempting to round its curve
on roller skates,
or simply from falls during rushed passages
in the heat of a game of hide-and-seek
or cops and robbers.

Whether I lay or stood
made no difference
to the hummingbirds
who executed their
sweep and dart, then paused suspended,
wings creating great outspread parasails
that held their small bodies
motionless in mid-air as they sipped
nectar from the speckled throats
of orange honeysuckle blooms,
profuse and heavy on their tangled vines.

Shifting to the nearby grass,
I closed my eyes to the music of their wings,
opened my eyes to see their blur—
another smudged memory
that moved too quickly
out of hearing
and of sight.

 

And, lest you, like Jim, think I have been neglecting hummingbirds in my poetry, HERE and HERE and HERE are three links to poems that at least mention hummers.

Luxuriating in Being Left

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Luxuriating in Being Left

In retrospect the loss of you has turned into a gain.
I’m rejoicing in the comfort of not having to explain.
I can do just what I want to, every day and every hour.
I am a snool to no one. I do not cringe or cower.
I sleep in in the morning with no breakfast to prepare.
I can dress the way I want to, choose the length of my own hair.
When I go to bed at night, I spread out in the middle.
I’m cool as any cucumber, not bacon on a griddle.
I wish your new love well with you, but I’m fine as I am,
for it’s the truth that when you left, I didn’t give a damn!

 

Prompt words today are nacre, comfort, rejoice and explain. Snool is an additional word I may or may not use.  The definition of snool is: a cringing person, to cringe or cower, or the opposite: to reduce to submission, cow or bully. There is one extra word today because I also used yesterday’s word from on prompt site because it was published too late to be used yesterday.

The Course

23 Replies

 

The Course 

All life falls
putrid
to the
forest floor,
or to
stream
bottom,
weighted down
by stones
rolled by the current,
daily farther
down.

Thus is life
flushed
from one form 
to another,
feeding the earth
or worms
or trees
or insects,
burrowing through
the richness
of decay.

Crucial,
no matter
how we fight it.
Botox and fine needles
cannot stop it,
only cushion
its footsteps.

As we are
pursued
like all life,
around the course
we can
veer
           off of
but never
escape.

Prompt words for the day are flush, putrid, crucial.

Trump Tower II

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Trump Tower II

The architecture of the house takes his needs to heart.
To create a perfect climate in every single part
was a top priority, so when the north winds blow,
within, he feels no ill-effects from gale or rain or snow.

He’ll find the ambient temperature is perfect day and night.
Summer, winter, spring or fall, be it day or night,
his family will not feel the cold, succumb to summer’s scorch
In the bedroom or the living room, the basement or the porch.

The sound control in every room functions without a hitch,
so when he whispers secrets, the staff can never snitch.
Noise produced in one room is not heard in any other.
He’s protected from Ivanka’s soaps and rock played by her brother.

All-in-all the ambience surrounds them like a glove—
be it balmy climate or all the sounds they love.
Bird song or the ocean or mixtures of the two.
What animal sounds they might crave—an auditory zoo.

Species may vanish off the earth but he will always hear them.
It’s nice to enjoy species without having  to be near them.
Doves cooing, elephants trumpeting, a lion’s hearty roar
might persuade a burglar to remain outside his door.

What cares he if the oceans rise and masses do not love it?
His house converts into a boat so you can float above it.
The whole world may freeze stiff or burn for all that he may care,
for he’ll be protected safely, tucked up in his fine lair.

Prompt words today are architecture,  ambient, succumb, snitch.

Red-Tailed Hawk

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Red-Tailed Hawk

Through the air high up above the graceful soarer weaves,
his shadow cast against the wall and stones and grass and leaves.
Without a modicum of sound, he drifts and circles ’round.
If those below detect him, it will not be by sound.

He seems to simply levitate, on wings lacking in motion,
betraying not one sign of his means of locomotion.
Below small dirt volcanoes betray presence of prey.
Small denizens of tunnels emerge from them each day.

Opting for the light after so many hours below,
darting back to safety when a human comes to mow,
they steal the seed corn, sheer the roots, consume the tender shoots.
As often as the mounds are  pressed flat by heavy boots,

the next day there’s another to take each burrow’s place.
Always another obstacle for opponents to face.
What act is fair for man to take in thinning nature’s riches?
What will I do to rid my lot of undersurface ditches?

The neighbors mount a protest, asking for an end
to creatures that usurp their space, and still I do not bend.
But here there is a creature who merely by its will
has the means to swiftly dip and fall upon its kill.

When the Red-Tailed Hawk dips low, watching from above,
I shudder as the claws surround the vole’s form like a glove.
Wings flapping for the lift-off, caught in sun’s early ray,
the bird with prey in claw now lifts and opts to fly away.

Their shadow soars onto my lawn over the wall between,
the prey it’s holding as it lifts too tiny to be seen.
Nature will deal with nature. It needs no intervening.
It is a way that our world has to deal with its own gleaning.

Image from Unsplash. Prompt words today are weaves, modicum, opt, blame and levitate.

Testing Fido

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Testing Fido

This test is good in ascertaining
if your dog recalls his training
and, further, it is meant to see
the extent of his fidelity.
In a fire or in a quake,
what action is he bound to take?
Will he quiver, cower and shake,
lose his head and run or quake
or will adrenalin make him faster
to locate and to save his master?
I do not wish to amplify
where your canine’s faults might lie,
but in times of peril he must
justify his master’s trust.
Just leave a burger in a pan
to start a fire if you can.
Feign sleep and see if he reacts
by waking you or if he acts
in his own interest first, and eats
the burger before he retreats
to give you ample time and warning
to view the damage before morning!
Will frenzy beat out appetite?
Or will Fido choose to bite 
the burger, and the hand that feeds him,
forsaking the one who needs him?

 

I know this is a horrible poem, but for once the prompts defeated me. I was going to junk it, but will post it as testimony to the fact I tried. Sort of. Prompt words today were ascertain, fidelity, amplify and frenzy.