I have a poem, a wandering wraith
to capture you I tried
in putting pen to paper
of my feelings when you died

But feelings are elusive things
especially when acute
and I have felt my words betray
my heart and leave it mute

Someday the poem may finished be
and then it will be known
of gifts you oft conferred to me
of love not said, but shown

But still my mind my heart betrays
eschews my fervent call
your dwelling place my heart these days
as tears unbidden fall

28 Dec 2002

I see them in the evening
echolocate after gnats
as they dart and dive for micro-prey
our night sky is alive with bats.

They clear away mosquitoes
never seeming to alight
and make it safer here below
these tireless workers of the night

I am fearful for their future
as we use our toxic sprays
for as we spray mosquitoes
we poison those who call them prey

Still the acrobatics thrill me
in their nightly hunt for gnats
and I hope for many years to come
our nights will be alive with bats

Cori MacNaughton
(July/Aug?) 1999

I feel you on my face
I taste you on the wind
I labor while I long for you
My most beloved friend

So long since you've been gone
Yet feel I the pain as much
And counting days as happenstance
Await your spirit touch

My fear profound yet plain
That I will never know
A love the like I had with you
The will to let you go

Cori MacNaughton
2Feb2005

Jane is playing hide and seek
with everyone she knows
and though she stands before you
you see only what she shows

She shows a tiny portion,
just a little more to friends
and though she stands before you
she has disappeared again

Jane must hide the one thing
that she knows you must despise
and though she stands before you
she is gone before your eyes

Jane is playing hide and seek
with her imperfect soul
and though she stands before you
she has fallen through a hole

18Mar2000

I feel great pain as the harpoon finds
the whale once more, I hear the boom
as explosion thunders, rips apart
the body, sinew and beating heart
as blood and tissue spread and drift

And shark, the lesser predator
nears and circles the carnage 'till
the struggle ends, the whale stills.
The sea once more is filled with loss
that might, had we more courage, been avoided

Cori MacNaughton
26August2003

Sunlight on the sea
       The curved fin of a dolphin
              A lone cloud observes

Cori MacNaughton
12 June 2000

Have you ever done something
and then could not believe
it could possibly have been you?

Have you ever said something
and then cringed when you heard it
exiting your mouth?

That would be me, sometimes . . .

Or, while mentally calculating
your accumulating grocery bill,
have you run into a friend
only to completely lose count?

I have stood in front of the door to my home
trying to lock or unlock the door
using the keyless entry fob from my car.

I have done this --- more than once.

I have, months after getting rid of that car,
searched for its keyless entry fob
on my keychain.

I have spent hours and days
searching for glasses on my head,
for keys that I was holding,
for the purse on my shoulder,
and have managed to miss them completely.

I have called information for a number,
written it down,
and then had to call them back
because I misplaced the number before I could redial the phone.

I have neglected friends and family,
duties and responsibilities,
not from lack of love
or sound intention,
but merely by allowing myself to be distracted.

If I had followed up
on what I knew at seventeen
whales, sharks, mankind ---
might already be saved.

Who knows what my focused mind might have accomplished?

But instead
I put myself to sleep
because the real world
was far too much to bear,
and living in books and dreams
so very much safer
than all the dysfunction awaiting outside.

I met my soulmate at twenty
and then left him behind
marrying one man,
and then another,
who never got me -
instead of the one and only man who truly did.

There's a reason that God protects children and Fools.
There's a purity of heart,
an innocence of spirit,
and . . . occasional lapses in intellect.

So, for all of the lessons I've learned and I've lost,
There are worse things than being a Fool.

Which I remind myself again
as I accidentally call my own cell phone
and then hang up my land line to answer the call.

In parting, I offer what I finally learned, which is

This above all:
To thine own Fool be true.

Cori MacNaughton
6Apr2005