Whatever might a performance tea
                                                           be?
Whatever are electrolytes to you
                                                           and me?
No antioxidants will ruin our night
                                                           all right?
And hydration is itself a fright
                                                          ­ Quite!

Blowing sleet rattles against the window pane
And the electrics have again winked adieu
But light the gas and brew up, black and plain
We’ll drink our tea by candles, with a biscuit
                                                         ­  or two

In nice China cups, or a mason jar

Because

The best tea of all is a cuppa char

(Upon reading a ‘vert for specialty teas)

How wonderful to live in Freeport, Maine
Where beautiful women and handsome men
In youth eternal rock their five-bar boots
And flannel shirts in happy, snowy scenes

Where laughter echoes through those forest glades
Forever free of electrical lines
Skunks burrowing under the cabin floor
And neighbors’ overflowing septic tanks

Oh, what a dreamy life for you and me
In Freeport, Zip Code 04033!


(Just having a little fun; everything I’ve bought from L.L. Bean’s catalogue is wonderful!  I’d love to live in the perfect New England scenes depicted in the catalogue. If you squint your eyes carefully you can see Bob Newhart’s inn on page…)

The nectar of youth from which the hummingbirds fed
In the joyful sweetness of their morning flights
Now sullies and sours the afternoon hours
Through bitter infestations and corruptions

Its former clarity corrupted now
Trapped in a tube of stagnation and rot
And scavenged by a malevolent wasp
Her batlike wings pulsing malignantly

But there is always hope: new songs, new words
In the morning’s return of sweet hummingbirds

In fear a child curls up into a ball
A very little ball, a little soul
Desperately seeking approval, and love
And given only disapproval, and blows

Hiding a favorite toy from a screaming purge
Childhood vaporized in an angry hour
Withdrawing into books and shining dreams
Withdrawing behind a fear-frozen face

and forever

Somewhere out there, discarded in the wild
Brave toy soldiers wait for a little child

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My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

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My sadness, anger, and shame concrete plan
I will travel to Rome third-party reporting
Mechanisms examining specific
Options advocate concrete proposals

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Expertise relevant disciplines need
Such tools already exist our structures
Must preclude criterion zero tolerance
Outreach psychological development

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This is the church house, this is the steeple
Where the Bishop dumps words upon the people

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From an idea by Jean Fisher

Six months of gasping, sere, soul-******* heat
Blood-******* mosquitoes, venomous snakes
And fetid, lung-drowning humidity

I loathe the summer, and I care not if
That wretched season goes away in silence
Or in noise -
                       only that it GOES AWAY

An urgent message that was never written
Was then not left beneath the third lantern
On an arching bridge that was never built
Under a wondrous river that never flowed

And men wondered at the unwritten words
They could not find atop the fourth lantern
In an echoing tunnel never dug
Over the steppes east of an eastern shore

And the message never written did not say:
O prelates and presidents – for whom do you pray?