How is it that another's love
can be so easily abandoned,
so thoughtlessly divested, like an
indifferent breath exhaled into
the frigid morning, visible but
for an instance then vanishing,
and meaning nothing at all?

--

The old dog drags his tired, sore
body into his familiar curl beside
my chair, sighs heavily and enters
once again that dream where
he runs carefree and painlessly
through the sweet meadow grass,
a meadow known only to him
and the newly-young man following.

--

There's a brisk autumn wind sweeping the ochre
and rust farm fields and that late summer hazy
that had hung above the valley for weeks, warm
and comforting, leaves with the scudding clouds.
The fragrance of burning fields, pungent but
yet somehow sweet-smelling and mildly
memory-provoking, charges the senses as it weaves
among the parched, plucked corn stalks, while from a
distant corner of the field an animated scarecrow,
clad in shredded polyester, has reign over the field
but instead flags a ride with the north wind.
It too seems to sense time calls for it to move along.

--

Here is Cedar Draw, a stream which
spills free from the dam upstream
and then slowly licks its way westerly
among the billowing cottonwood
and volcanic boulders that still appear red-hot,
flattening out, pooling here and there
where fat trout and perch can feed
on luckless grasshoppers and mayflies
blown into the water by the wind.

Here is Cedar Draw, widening into
lush shallows with bulrush and cat-tails
clicking in the wind, showy red-winged
blackbirds clinging to stalks high above
the waterline, and where snowy egrets
ply the mossy banks for frogs. The
only sound heard is the chittering of
birds and that warm summer breeze
softly moaning and sighing for you alone.

Here is Cedar Draw, as fine a place
a poet could every hope to find to relax,
meditate, sip a little port wine, tease the
iridescent-blue damselflies that abound
here, cool one's feet at water's edge,
scribble in a notebook disjointed thoughts
that may or may not make it into a poem,
perhaps to doze a little and finally to
rouse up and thank your muse for such
a great day and such a splendid spot.

--

A fly, aware of possibilities
beyond the picture window,
taps incessantly on the glass
but cannot reach them.
The older I become the more
I feel like a miserable fly
at an impossible window. How
unfair it is, this aging process,
this melting down of tissue and
disintegration of bone and sinew,
this deterioration, cell by cell;
this loss of vigor and ambition.

--

Hear it, feel it! Above the live oak
and Spanish moss, above their
gnarled, grasping canopies, the
night wind flies savage and free.
Without constraint or direction
it inhales, blows, flings about at will,
tearing wantonly at primeval fears.
And higher yet, to the east there's a
cooper moon rising sinisterly, lighting
the way for wary night hunters.
Is it the howling of their hounds, or
the howling of that feral wind, or
something more I hear?
Yes, something more, I fear.

Such an eerie night on the bayou,
where fireflies pulse phosphor green,
dangling, dancing like marionettes
above jutting cypress knees. Along
the farthest bank, tip-toeing in mire,
a pale night-heron walks as a ghost,
dropping its head to strike, to give
final croak to some hapless frog.
Were crows awake on such a night
they'd caw and clamor and sidle up
to each other to see which could
provide the most reassurance
against such a dreadful night.
Latch every door, shutter every
window, light every candle!
The night wind is on the prowl!

---