the eager child
runs to the hanging fruit--weeps
at picked stems

Am I to be forever maimed
By a childhood I did not devise
Pulled down from every step I've gained
By the phantoms of my night
That twist and shift and leave me bare
In that harshest light of scorn-
That cannot be explained away
And haunt me even as I  rise
To struggle up the stairs again.
                          ljm

My wild bird has flown away
Gone to that island in the sun
On her way and carried with her
My heart, my only one

We lived a dream
Ethereal, we realized
How perfect love can be
What we encountered
Under cloudless skies

There beneath the palm trees
We achieved peace and understanding
Sweet and sensuous sighs found at last
Consigned to be in the past perfect tense

For dreams must end
Birds must fly
Carried on cool winds
My wild bird cruises high

The love is not gone
Just her presence
The feelings shall always remain
I'll just have to carry on
They say tomorrow will be a day of rain

Swift whiffs catch grasp
as you pass last, lasting
gazes and breaths past
clinging to breast, backs
scratched has
he made you,
feel this good in a while?
Or am I the one- hidden in
the shadow of your past stories present
and on the crest of the futures picture
which her to choose... one of you
one of two blended to be, mended in me
is that place where her perfume lingered dense and stale
tell the tale
no more
Only repress
undress
and make each other happy
one more time.

My heart is a desert,
Parched,
Ready for the soothing rain of your love.
But the promise of your affection
Is a mirage.

Indian summer
a late rainy morning
still in bed, gazing
at your empty side.
Is that the aroma of coffee
and crisp-fried bacon
wafting into our room
enticing me to rise?
Tears fill my eyes--
no use, no use,
no use to pretend.
You'll never return
cancer made sure of that...

If you know why
salmon swim upstream
in a suicidal attempt to
get back to their beginnings
and why lemmings head
en masse for the sea
and why drones who
service the queen bee
inevitably die,
then tell me why
I who should follow
their lead hold back?
Am I afraid to find
that the pain of leaving
might be less than the
pain of staying behind?
Is this what salmon, lemmings
and drones all know?
And so they willingly go?

Aging arms
splotched with purple and red
signs of tangling
with jagged dead branches
reach for a copy
of Ted Kooser's *
Flying at Night
.
Pages flip
for a stop here and there
to read _Sunset,
Carp and _Spring Plowing

Envy swells inside him
with the realization
that he will never
write such fine poems
about memories
of childhood adventures

Like Kooser
he was reared
living rural
among tiger lilies
blooming in meadows,
amid newborn calves
teetering toward first steps,
and around
freshly spread manure
capturing the scent of fall air

His fingers still grimy
from early morning planting
place the volume
carefully beside
his empty coffee cup
content that he is blessed
to have discovered Kooser's work

He rises to tackle
digging potholes
for double begonias
to decorate his yard
and to dream
his dream
of pages unread.
and pages unwritten.

tufts of grass stand in the yard  
hairy green patches of tenacity
in a field of neglect

half a screen guards
a **** stained door where
someone painted, 214

the pit bull sits behind it
waiting to be fed, and to be
chained again to the stake

where, like any beast bound
by gravity and the grave, he will
make ceaseless circles  

smaller  e a c h  day,  
unwitting sentry to those
two legged creatures
inside

who, with or without
the pit, lie prostrate, in dreamless
bug rich beds    

when they fall
from sleep, they too make circles
bound by stakes and chains…
invisible    

though their pull is felt
and their infernal rattle heard
no matter how far from home
the prisoners of Tulip roam