I've become a lazy reader,
dismissive and curmudgeony too.
Magazines or books? Not magazines--
Magazine readers are a different species.

So books it is. Let me take inventory:
Nonfiction. Sorry, just the occasional science book.

General fiction lost the war for my attention--
Do real people really have so many feelings?
So often and so detailed?

So I read genre fiction.
But bang, bang adventure has become tiresome--
after all how many times and ways can you shoot/stab/blow up/car chase?

Likewise, there are books that seem spend pages and pages describing clothes.
Even though Chaucer also spent many words describing clothes,
his best lines were about bare ***** hanging out a window.

All my favorite characters are now old, Harry Bosch, George Smiley.
To my regret, the Wall falling and the Cold War ending almost wiped out the thoughtful spy story.
Science fiction, a previous favorite, took a goofy turn awhile ago, and I’m done with it.
Let's see: fantasy now seems written for teenage vampire-witch wannabes. Just flutter away.

What's left? I think it's only Detective stories and Poetry.
I'm pulling for Harry Bosch and Billy Collins at 90, and, God bless him, John Le Carre.

Outside, near the entrance,
a tendril wafts into my nose—
A pleasant olfactory response,
as the molecules are absorbed,
and work into the capillaries,
Traveling through the veins,
Into the heart twice and then the arteries to the brain,
Binding to and activating the nicotinic receptors—
Causing a release of dopamine—
Yes, a runner’s high!
And never mind the downsides,
Even after a 30-year quit.

And yet, I'm glad I quit.

Strobing flashes in the clouds,
Thunder rolling through the hills.
Dust puffs with the first drop-
The promise of grass and prairie flowers.

The Indian gentleman, Brahmagupta,
invented the zero, null, nil, and zip--
just for times like this:
You betrayed me, you broke my heart.

Rewind, erase, delete, obliterate.
You are naught to me.

Black holes are really cool.
The bigger the cooler.
And they are not really black.
Absorbing real quick, emitting real slow,
By George, that's the way to go.

Driving down a backroad in desolate Apulia,
a black cloud of birds formed behind a hill--
It became two then one again in dynamic flight,
resolving into specks and finally,
graceful darts of life.
In the air: Swerving, splitting, rejoining.
Aware of each and all,
a synchronous response to a secret call.

A wave in motion, a flowing organism,
never repeating but ever the same.
We stopped and looked with wonder--
How do they do that? And why?

A lightning bolt: Is it a protest? Pesticides?

What would we do when
topsoil blows,
oceans rise,
food is scarce,
and wells run dry?
Probably nothing as organized- or beautiful.

The Indian gentleman, Brahmagupta,
invented the zero, null, nil, and zip--
just for times like now:
You betrayed me, you broke my heart.

Zero, null, nil, and zip--
Rewind, erase, delete, obliterate.
You betrayed me, you broke my heart.
You are nothing to me.

Rewind, erase, delete, obliterate.
Brahmagupta’s wonderful cipher lets me precisely say:
You are naught to me--
And not just for now, but forever.