if I could only find my way
Through the gullies dug between my eyes
To quell the anger seething there
That blocks my view of Marigolds

If I could figure out a way
To navigate the wrinkled brow
And gently smooth away the frown
That generates the thunder

If I could calm the troubled orbs
That see the roadblock not the road
And show them how to look again
To see a new reality

Than I would have a mended face
To offer to the world at large
And maybe they would see the change
And welcome my serenity
   ljm

She stands before the bathroom mirror
Creating several different faces
Tryng to find the one that doesn’t
Make her look so tired and old.

Some of them make her look ill
A couple more look silly.
The one she finally settles on:
A wan and disappointed smile -

Accepted as least ugly of the bunch
It’s not the face she’d hoped to wear
In this the Autumn of her life.
She expected some small trace
Of former beauty to remain.

She tried to make a little sparkle
To liven up her somber eyes
And find the muscle in her cheek
That lifts her lips into a grin.

A sorry rictus of despair
Was all that effort brought her
So she gave up and threw the switch
And slipped away in darkness
ljm

Fictitious love was all you had
You offered it like it was gold
But it turned green in my warm hands
And all my happiness turned sad
It wouldn't do much good to scold
For not becoming wedding bands

Common people called him stingy
And with his funds he was.
But he was parsimonious
In areas that they never saw.

                Epitaph
True, he never spent a dime
If he could get it free.
He never wasted any time
That anyone could see.

He didn’t have much love to give
And wanted no love back
He had a certain way to live
Laid out in white and black.

He didn’t give and didn’t take.
He had no use for friends.
He died alone and that’s the way
This kind of story ends
                      ljm

This year’s Estival
Was supposed to be the best of all
But a Chinese pandemic
Gave us something not to mimic
ljm

Time
A crooked line
Connecting then and now
Never quite achieving the conjunction
That would build a bridge
To somewhere over there
And make a path to
What could be a better sometime
      ljm