The griffin outside my balcony
squinted and shook
flipping Kansas City
upside down and back.

Giant flakes descended
like softest down -
coating the plaza below
with a mantel of frosted white.

The griffin is squinting once more.
Watch out; hold on tight!
Here we go again
whirling about in a cyclonic flurry
of magic fairy crystals.

*August, 2010

Early spring has come to Thelma’s farm.
The geese are on the pond,
a green velvet carpet circles the barn
while songbirds greet the morning sun.

We walk down Thelma's rutted road
where milk trucks used to rumble in
to fetch the morning’s yield.
Old Tikki leads the way - a pale fluff of a mutt
like a dust mop searching for its handle.

Thelma’s cows are long since gone –
sold off after Dutch was called to eternity
but she'd no more forsake this land - her land
than the sun would forget to rise.

Early spring has come to the Missouri hills
where clean warm breezes whisper hope.
Soon the ready soil will taste
the furrowing blades of the plow
near fields where livestock graze and flourish.

We’ve reached the bend in the road.
Old Tikki's wearing down
so we turn to retrace our steps.
A committee of neighbor calves
studies us with soulful eyes
and we appear to pass inspection.

Tikki guides us on our homeward path
where a ribbon of golden jonquility
neatly trims the foreyard fence.

Spring has come again to Thelma’s farm
as it always has and always will -
where clean warm breezes whisper hope.

March 13, 2011

Stephen Hawking in a fantasy rush
once thought the universe would max its tether,
turn a mighty one eighty back toward
the starting gun and run the show in reverse.

What if it were really so?

Would a butterfly return to pre-chrysalis days,
crawl backwards on stalks and un-munch leaves?

Would Frost back-step up that diverged path
to ponder his options anew?

Would we have to jettison those data cards
that school has stuffed inside us
and retreat to our amniotic broth?

What if it were really so?

Uh oh, here come the terrible lizards
back for a curtain call.
Don't you think it's getting awfully hot?

What if it were really so?

Imagine if you can, the silence following the
great "thwupping" sound of the "gnaB giB".

*February, 2015

Could you have ever been?
                         and will I ever be
              and is there such a thing as us?

            What could my moist and sinew
                    matter to your retinas
       as they track these curves and corners?

With luck, my scratches will cast a few drift twigs
              off on the streams and estuaries
                     of your verbal essence.

                        So tell me your tales
               of mystic dreams and journeys
                         as if you ever were
                 or I might ever chance to be.

The sign said.
"Heisenberg may have slept here"
so we'll never know.

Was he never here
or was he here and failed to sleep?
Perhaps he slipped in the back
to saw some zzz's on the couch.

We'll never know for sure.
As soon as we think we spotted him,
the screen fades to black!

At the third world's first sun,
the Anasazi climbed
through a narrow Sipapu
and pressed footprints in the dust
of a new unspoiled universe.

In secluded canyon hollows
watered by softly chanting springs,
they piled rocks upon stones
shaping vast adobe cities
mortared with pastes of moistened clay.

At Mesa Verde - Chaco - de Chelly
fields of maize sway,
brushed by the canyon winds
while Pueblos danced in the plazas below
to the throbbing beats
of skin-stretched hollow log drums.

Today their children’s children
circle fire pits in sacred Kivas
raising chants and prayers
to their hallowed ancestors.

Wearied by famine and conquest,
Pueblo eyes scan the heavens
searching for a new Sipapu
to lead them to a better world still.

September 11, 2006

For Nat Lipstadt

In response to Nat's deeply moving poem that included me, I now dedicate this 2007 poem to Nat, who I am sure, knows exactly what it means.

               
She smiled as she
set her lips into
most agreeable motion -
her larynx flexing to
modulate the passing air.

The sequenced air waves
shook my auric drums
and journeyed to my soul.

Out of my reservoir
of ritual response
my lower face
turned a congenial curve.

Two puffs of air
pulsed my vocal folds,
were filtered
by my tongue and lips
and formed a sonic pattern
she was sure to know,

“Thank you.”

December, 2007