How many more springs will be granted.
Springs where seeds and flowers are planted.
How long will the filthy rain sustain the vigor
Of tender shoots so green and innocently eager.
We spew out human seed to take root on earth,
Lessening its space, its value and its worth.
How long until we are world of ants scurrying,
Everything trampled by the constant hurrying.
We have chipped the beauty away into rows
of ticky-tacky houses where nothing grows.
Where are the jungles, the forest primeval.
Not now but air and water that are lethal.
Oh, mourn the earth of beauteous expanse.
Now no beauty can be found with a glance.
Mayhaps we will survive - but maybe not. . .
between progress and the lessons taught.
Sleep well sweet Earth, beautiful orb.

Scent of pine lingers
over the deep labyrinths
beneath the trees.
Black beetles bump chests
like Sumo wrestlers
as they try to avoid each other
in the warm scratch
of detritus dark with shade.
Baby snakes lace the meadow grass
where deep sunshine heats their cold bones.
A deep hush is suspended
by the erratic leaps of pond frogs.
One sails on a limb through
water yellow and noxious as nicotine.
The day carries  its own rhythms
and paints them on a peaceful canvas.
Where I would love to be.

Saturday.
He fondles his roses
as little Beth walks by,
holding her mommy’s hand.
When mother and daughter
are up the street a bit,
he palpates petals,
lets thorn press into his crotch.

He is that nice old retired preacher
from the middle of the block.
He babysits Beth while her mommy
goes to the gym.

His predilections are private...
secret...
No one knows.
No one knows but little Beth...

and all the little girls before her.
Not everyone is who they seem
and evil can live forever hidden.

Invisible

They walk the city streets, invisible.
Everyone looks away, afraid to see.
Afraid that they themselves may
one day have to say, “It’s me.”

They dig through garbage bins,
and everyone looks away in disgust.
To eat and strengthen the body
is nit a little thing - it is a must.

Invisible and hated, street people

Bumblebee Books

My Grammy was my special hero who taught me a loving respect for books.
She said books teach us and widen our world,
they never give a fig about a reader’s looks, or if they new clothes.

When June came the yellow trucks would arrive
from the school-system for Grammy to repair.
For this was 1952, where a book had to survive.

We had glue pots with tongue-depressor tongues,
and tape and scissors and huge erasers, pink
and white for the ink marks dancing on the page.
Words and words and words, all to make you think.

Big bumblebees would swarm about the pots of glue,
touching their tongues to the white Elmer’s taste.
We trimmed and erased and I learned of far-off lands.
We were careful that our glue never went to waste.

Unwanted and unloved, treated with savage brutality,
this was a place of freedom and acceptance, a world
where little girls found hope and safety so she would
grow into a woman who sits with a book, legs curled.

THE OFFERING

He sat, silently smirking over
his cardboard cup of coffee,
leaning, to lap it like a cat.

Lips oiled and curved and bluish,
hands knotted with filth, he
stroked his pocket.

Like a child picking wildflowers -
he paid court to every set of eyes
in the busy hum of the fast-food
place.

He chose me and pinned me to
his moment in time.
Lascivious, leering, laughing,
he opened his pocket just for me.

A half-dead sparrow leaked
part way out and burred its
broken wing.

It sang as sweetly as if we were
in a glen, a meadow, a dale of
helitroping sunflowers.

Then he licked one lip and
ran his bony, bent finger down
the bird's spine, causing it
to flutter, as if some phantom
wind blew by...