Trying to post again
Hoping that today it works
Outside is nothing but rain
And this website has some quirks

But try again I will
To placate my poetry fervor
Fearing the bone-cutting chill
Of error 500s from the server

A few words before a nap
In the heat of the midsummer radiance
In the heavy air of a string of rainless days
When our lawn with its broad diversity of weeds
Sits green without our help

Before succumbing to the mid-afternoon weight
Of eyelids commanding me to put tools down
I will select from the firmament
A few choice combinations of letters
And their concomitant meanings

They will say 'I am alive'
In a landscape of life and death and struggle
I am an organism that works to move forward
Though some days I'll move less than others
And sometimes I will rest.

Our stairs are made of wood
The trees that they once were
Probably grew nearby
One hundred years ago
When our house was built.

Maybe they grew in a copse on a hill,
Spent decades swaying in the wind
Tasted the rain, and the soil
And the carbon dioxide
Exuded by creatures of the forest
And people who lived among them
And those that would one day come
And bring them to the ground.

And now they bring me
To my bedroom every night
Where I doze quietly off
While inhaling the cool night air from the window
And puffing out carbon dioxide dreams.

On the surface of the ever-turning sphere
Corners blend with curves in the vapour
Shape is lost in currents of wind and fog
Treetops know what their trunks do not
We sit among the falling droplets
They condensed upon the needles
And get shaken loose by the breeze
This shower falls with pleasing staccato rhythm
But the sun seeks to burn away the veil
And lay bare our insecurities.

Extend your hand, palm up
Silk - a long bolt of it,
unfurls across your palm
Cold on contact
And smooth
And smooth and smooth
Dragging a crisp wind behind it
As it falls away like a solid liquid

Extend your hand,
A gelatinous orb, almost sticky to the touch
But not quite.
Rubbery, resilient, responsive
Pulled under the weight of gravity
To bulge and droop over the edges of your hand
When you drop it, it hesitates as it lets go.

Extend your hand
Feel the weigh of a solid masonry cube
The greyest concrete
Each crenelation of its surface
Like a dry-skin pore
The corners and edges hold their shape sharply
Dragging fingers make a rasping sound
And a ceramic-like ring as it slips from your hand

Extend two hands together
Like to catch a stream of water
But instead you cradle
A tired and content weeks-old kitten
It adjusts its position, and curls up
Content with the warmth of your hands
You feel the soft, purring of velvet fur
It feels implicit trust, warmth and security
For its always-pending next nap.

An entire genre of poetry
Crafted from the pondering of the page blank.
I have a mild disappointment as they
Are submitted into the stream
Of word sculptures that cross my desk
Emerging from nothing
From the art of just getting started.
And even so, here I sit
Having just pulled together one myself.

What silliness is this?
This stage, long intended for strutting and fretting,
Seems now exclusively for naked emperors,
And there are so many waiting back stage.