These days, all my dreams
are of being at sea,
far out in water so deep
distance has a different language
fathomless
mysteries swim below me
while I watch the stars
from my small boat.
At Sea
Six Words: November 30
From a visitor, I just discovered Six Word Saturdays. based on the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs By Writers Famous And Obscure. Fun. Want to try? Visit Six Word Saturdays at Show My Face.
Here’s mine–
Trees Choose Trimmings: Snow or Lights?
Holiday Couture
Thanksgiving morning is sewn with crystals
draped on every branch.
Sky wears bright blue
with three puffy pink clouds
tossed casually over the barn roof.
Deer accent the wide field beyond.
The two cardinals are almost gaudy,
their splash of color nearly too much
for such a pilgrim holiday.
Diamond Of Possibility
Gathering things into piles
we’ll sort tomorrow
is how our lives
grow dusty,
how all the facets
in the diamond of possibility
lose their luster, dim,
and wink out.
Gather Is A Verb
An action word
can fool us—
Spinning in circles
is not the same as
climbing the mountain.
This Same Boat
Hospitals feel like high school—
waiting rooms filled with people
who have only this in common—
the anxious, the overtired,
the giddy, the lonely, the tattooed,
groomed, tattered, athletic,
and those who only move in herds,
all of them, all of them,
with too much to carry
and their eyes fixed on the door.
About The Authors
The shy boy, who never speaks in class,
raises his hand now, when the subject matters.
How much violence, he wants to know, how
much gore can he include in his novel
of a science experiment gone horribly wrong?
Next to him, the girl doodling flowers
says she hasn’t started yet but
is thinking of a children’s story
about a pony, or possibly a unicorn.
Later, face shining, she stops me in the
crowded hallway to show me ten pages
of scribbled notebook paper.
She says, I’ve changed my mind.
Now, it’s a romance.
Cinema
The old stars were sunlight once
Movie theater, closed 30 years,
shuttered and dark,
brick and mortar slowly dissolving in time
until just now, when pale November sun
reached across the abandoned parking lot,
and climbed the tall back
where the screen used to be.
For a long dawn moment,
the whole building glowed pink,
warmed and beautiful
in the light of all this attention.
Disaster Preparedness
is the skill I’m trying to unlearn.
I work hard at picturing disaster
not stalking us at all, but rather
losing interest, wandering off.
If disaster stumbles into my door,
I want to be surprised.
When I hear that all day
tornadoes swept the Midwest
I add more curry to the soup
to smoke out trouble while
I balance the phone to my ear.
Those high winds
you remind me
are headed straight for us.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 