On Meeting

Well . . . it's true
I know you
your insides
speak to me
through words
. . . uncareful
and trusting
yet it is only through
these words
exulting hallelujah!
I've found you
that I see you.

. . . . . Is
that really you
is that who you are
sitting there
calmly dissecting ideas
becoming engorged on fact
face a stranger's?

Is that familiar mind
hiding behind that
sphinx-like head
those pale grey eyes
. . . . careful now
unlike the exuberance
of your written word?

. . . . Tell me
what does that strange
smile mean? and what
does the calmness
of those eyes envisage?
Can you see me
here behind this face?
Do my eyes refuse
to reflect
familiar words?

Interlude

I offer you
hospitality
of a rare and
guileless intent.

Come to my house
and share with me
a splendid
a queenly repast

prepared by
my very own
porcelain hands.

This nutbrown duck
in my oven;
breathe its
rare invitation.

Friend: I
present myself
on a gleaming
silver salver.

And when you tooth
that crisphide morsel
. . . guard for slivers.

My Troybird
Odysseus bequeathed
antiques a painted decoy.

Some Things

Some things are
never forgotten
become recalled
triggering response
and childhood flashes
before unready eyes.

The child terrified
of the sterile
unsmiling unknown
of the hospital
is drugged to oblivion
yet still hears
voices as from the
watery depths of an
endless ocean.

Recalled
an adult
pressed in on all sides
by moist hurried bodies
becomes anesthetized
tunes in to herself
hears voices
thin, strained
from that vast distance
of unquiet
alienation.

Looking For Roscoe

As summer days go, it's a
true scorcher, all right,
nary a whisper of wind
and the sun sitting high and
regal, lording it over the
vast blue, unclouded sky.

The very air suffocates in
the humid, breath-stifling
aura of summer's dog days.
Long forgotten the icily frigid
days of peak winter when
warmth seemed unattainable.

There is some relief to be had
within the haven of the forest
environs with its wide ribbon of
stagnant, turgid water, where
birds fly low, looping the air to
catapult low-hanging branches.

Above, riding a bicycle on the
forest trail, a dark, thick-set man
not to be met at such a solitary
secluded place, frantically searching
for his wayward, relief-seeking
brown, heat-exhausted dog.

The Hasty Tongue

We are never so blind or as blindingly
blameless as when we mortally offend
others to whom we broken-heartedly
attribute our own failings in communication.
While you may dismiss vituperative bile
as an unfortunately unguarded lapse in
social decorum, the hapless target
understands it to be a painful, albeit
fortuitous warning of a potential future.

That hasty tongue, eager to inflict
emotional pain upon others to teach the
lesson that you will not be trifled with at
the unwary offender's expense, overlooks
your propensity to take offence when none
was intended. That damning temperament
and blistering tongue warped by your
defensive ego will be your final epitaph.

It will deliver you to the fate you fear as
you slide weeping, wailing and blaming,
friendlessly into a bleak and lonely future.
Listen my dear, tart is piquant; acid is toxic.
But you're no slouch, you know all that, and
more. You simply cannot equate all this
with your open, trusting, innocent character.

Why did I not speak earlier, before your
splenetic urges became habitual? There was
no 'before'. I did, on occasion, make that
attempt, however feeble, over the years
and to no avail. And I lack the courage to
pursue it now. I too quail with terror before
your seemingly unappeasable rage. And,
my dear, I weep, inconsolably for you.

The Green Canopy

The sun glories in the afternoon's
cloudless sky bestowing its powerful
radiation of energy and heat on a
summer-panting landscape of green.
All is still in the woods, grateful for a
gentle breeze, lightly swaying leaves.

Yellow loosestrife, buttercups and
daisies, purple cowvetch and fleabane
line the verdant corridors of bass, oak, pine,
sumac and spruce. The bright blossoms
of thimbleberry promise plump pink
late-summer berries for the picking.

A stream is stopped at low trickle, closely
dammed by an impenetrable fortress of
forest detritus, carried along on the high
tides of copious rainfalls, washing branches,
twigs, rotted stumps and clay banks down
the hillsides and into the forest stream.

The deep open gash in a tall old pine
no longer serves as an owl nest. The
fledgling now gone, feathers and flight
finally attained under anxious scrutiny
and patient tutelage of its parents. No
longer does its strange mewling hoot
of a cry cling to the green canopy.

Hazy Summer Days

It is the haziest of lovely summer
days, the sun and the clouds
treating the sky above, the landscape
below to alternating games of shy
and gentle peek-a-boo. Butterflies
lazily graze the tops of shrubs
and bees dip into floral pollen.
From neighbours' yards come the
sounds of water, children, exuberant
expressions of unadulterated joy.

I wander in fresh delight of my garden
revealing its daily gifts from nature to me.
My very own prized and hidden places where
treasures abound to suddenly, surprisingly,
so tenderly and mischievously leap into
view like children invested in exciting
themselves by gaining delighted notice of
doting grandparents through brilliantly
audacious exploits to burnish their image
in the fond eyes of their fervent admirers.