My sister – camping on the coast
Muttering over macaroni
Fixing salad
Talking to a seagull

“George” mews like a cat
awaiting dinner
Waddling web-foot along the stony cliff
To him – life is a handout
against the backdrop of the setting sun
Garlic bread, spaghetti, chocolate chip cookie –

My sister adopts things
What was ever wild after?
Even this “Master of the Wind”
eats Italian tonight!

Till the “Alpha Bird”
younger stronger
spots the eye of orange on plate of white –
Whirls in on protest and demand
George responds in kind
Intruder seizes a meatball
George squawks and lunges
his last...
_

The sunset on the Maine coast tonight
enthroned in vaporous haze
Imbued with fragrance-- ocean rose
The sky-- delicate
mountain laurel pink
bleeding into purple
where the tallest spires of spruce
have stabbed upward
From the coastline's rock
comes qweedling of the robins
calls of sea birds in the peaceful distance....
__

        ….George struggles in Alpha's grip
on windpipe
Meal forgotten
as nature serves its worst
His neck arched back
Wings fluttering desperate
in his last display
a spray of feathers
Strength will take this day
Plunge it into faint squawks
George dissolves limp in quivers

as Alpha--
weightless victor
lifts away

Suzy cries out
despair at loss of little friend
        “I can't! I can't!

I rush out to hold  
his last limp sigh

...tossing his gray and white into another sky

The angel tried to show me
'bout the button on the bottom
of my phone
that if I pressed
could talk to her again
and she to me
Suddenly
Momentary static and
It was her again!
Like we never stopped
our goodnight calls
Her conversation still
strewn about in her dementia
But I understood it all
her love, I mean
Asked her
"Can you feel me hug you?"
She could, she said
But then my cell slipped off the bed
with our connection
broken
Tears of sleep

What is it about the moon
That I miss so much
Hiding in the corners
Of the sky
Peeking between
the shrubbery of the clouds
It's no use, bright thing
I still see you

Why talk about it--
as one
is breaking down
in loveless lessons of alone
rumbling 'cross the sky
running lightning's fury
into ground
as if a voice could shake a soul
so softly form its leaping dance
Could call the world
to ground itself
so softly
among the words
to make a landing in the difference...

be enough...

to turn back time
from last, its mission
To tell its vision
like it was
the way it went
to tell the truth
of what it truly is
the way it had to be
to call it down from heaven
Just this once
to say--

I love you

I could not recall the lyrics to the songs
Except for maybe one
“Que sera, sera...”
had no meaning besides its fun
Swing set in the yard
where I learned to fly
to overcome
my fear of
music in the trees
to sing to leaves
to green and blue of sky

Que sera sera
and back and forth before the rain
Que sera
of all this reckoning and rocking back and forth
Que sera...sera
What will be,  will be
the future's not ours to see...

Que sera sera

Small pond under the tree
dark, deep
filled with rainwater
and relief

One frog
only one
has made it home
Resting in the soupy duck ****
by a fallen branch
in muck of rotting leaves

Floating

Isolated

in quiet of the green

A queen

Does not call for mate
as if she knows
they are not listening

Having found the ones they need
...and so she
being so different
in her view
of on/off fireflies
by night
off
on
always
in their searching of July

Like days
...of goldfinches
with cursive flight
that sweep the day in loopy strokes
that mirror close their seeking song

Frog has found
...Peace
can be so precious

She picked it up from the seashore.
He encouraged her,
Flattered her with indulgence
To bring back her dying flame.
A girl once again,
She brought it home
In whimsically ebullient innocence!
On the polished floor
In a faraway city
It found it hard to walk
With the load of mollusk
And made a funny sight!
It strained its ears
But there was no sound of the sea,
No saline smell in the air,
Instead the water was sweet and insipid.
It went thirsty.
The food was alien,
It went hungry.
Soon they polished the shell
And celebrated addition of
Another showpiece in their room!
The crab had at last
Found a new home.