In the end, they had to break into his room
He was dead in his chair, and quite alone
Self-exiled from his family for years
Alone in a shell, silent, and alone

The accidentals of life were cast away:
A coffee ***, a coat over a door
His schedule for the methadone clinic
A note to meet with his parole officer

But the pathology tox screen was clean -
Better than most of us, he went down fighting

Cicadas contribute to the silence
With their impious reproductive racket
A cloud of whistles, whirrs, buzzes, and clicks
In the otherwise still and stiller noon

An old man rests his shovel and himself
And sits in the flickering shade awhile
To think of nothing while sweet incense rises
Up from the sacred bowl of his Peterson’s pipe

The Eternal breathes silently over all
(Them cicadas sure is noisy, though)

Suggested by a Thought from Temporal Fugue

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
And because they respect us, they wrestle back;
We shape them in order serviceable 1
And they refuse to be pinned as cliches’

We fling a needful verb against a noun
To make a thought complete, but then adverbs
And adjectives begin cluttering lines
And then we all must take a coffee break

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
For every scrap of story, verse, or hymn


1 Cf. John Milton, “Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

Well, okay, it’s out there in the back yard
Where on display you’ll see: old boonie hats
Uncool, but good when working in the heat
And cotton khakis from the discount store

Just washed, and drying in the summer sun
Admired by every Merry Little Breeze 1
Skivvies and socks sewn in Cambodia
And work shirts stitched together in Viet-Nam

Nothing by Versace or Calvin Klein
Just old clothes drying on the old clothes line


1 Thornton W. Burgess’ Mother West Wind stories

Someone demands an immigration czar
Which could be interesting: a crown, a throne
A double-eagle flag, the border guards
Singing a Troparian while on patrol

On the Steppes of Central Texas 1
The Czar in progress royal comes to see
His happy villagers waving MREs
From behind the merry Potemkin wire

The Czar, contented, turns his escort then
To Petersburg, and lunch at the Little Red Hen

1 Cf Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

When the kitchen staff did the washing-up
They could not but notice, among the bowls
And serviettes, spoons, knives, pitchers, and plates,
One of the best silver trays, blotchy with blood

And scraps of vertebrae, ruining the shine
“Oh, bother; these stains will never come out,”
Muttered the old woman in charge of such things
But she scrubbed and polished, did a good job

With that and with each costly silver cup
When the kitchen staff did the washing-up

The First Blast of the Trumpet 1 (if not the Trump) Against
the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media

V: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
R: No.


1 No apologies to the odious John Knox