In-digestion

Days filled out to the horizon edges

Ever seeking water, buying bottles of it, disposables

Toilet paper by the ton weight-compostable

and "What’s for dinner?”

Not in that order, in between

laundry loads.

“Do termites eat bamboo?”

He asked me. Seems to be.

The pergola’s slatted skeleton roof 

has become brittle, weathered, withered. 

“Recycling slow,” I finally say,

“We won't have to take it down when we go,”

I looked up to the source of the birdsong,

while he looked down, inspecting
insect droppings.

How he despised any discussion

of death; Post-facto.

While I was preoccupied

making beds, tucking in the corners,

he overlooked the white noise

roar of termites digesting all edges
between inside and out. 

Photo credit: me (Pergola, 2016)

Puzzling poet

The last line was laid and this tied it all together,
Success!

Yet in the excitement of the assembled vivid scene,

the poet dropped his masterpiece onto the tile floor,

Whereby words shattered and scattered about

Everywhere.

Dejected and deterred, he could only kneel down

and try to pick up the pieces flung in far off places,

watchful for synonymous edges 

and similar shades

and of course, he paid particular attention
to the edges.

It had been done before, 

he told himself to start over,

it would be easier this time,

never imagining a different picture

put together,

he caught himself still glued to the finished image

of the new poem before him-
Stunning!

From out of Nowhere

its edges disappeared,

he saw it would never be finished,
so he took it apart and put it away.




Artwork by Harry Willson Watrous [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

community pool (Haiku)

The hungry hippo

does not roar but weights a round
edges to blend in.

Photo credit By Don Juan, Comte de Montizón (1822 - 1887) Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Standing Ovation

Now we will see 

                         what comes next

by unfurling progression 

                         or Nows in succession.

Pick one,

put it in your pocket,

feel it with your fingers

every now and then,

until its edges smooth,

and you use it for warmth.

This Now could Be

more valuable later, grow on you

by inflation of your reflection,

                        mirroring idea in light,

this is why it startles us 

                        in unexpected color,

a stroke of magenta not man made,

                        Now speechless,

too beautiful to save.

Photo credit By Unknown photo: Mcowkin (Lychakiv Cemetery) [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

A crappy map is a happy map

A map is handy
for some...
Still-just rendering space
this here: that there
(imagining is not knowing beyond
what is not seen).

This world is flat,
trapped in a map,
cornered in labels and confined in lines,
open to borders-crossing...
Still-it plans
for speculation.

I drew a map,
of no place I know-
but discovered it anyway,
and I know
my way around this place
of space, like the back of my red hand

measured by my means, not in factors of feet
walking the picket. I had to draw it before I saw
it, a map of me in this place, no free-handed trace
left to write what else
could not fit-
why did I quit?

I'm at the edge of the world.
Peering over, dripping down,
chilling off,  the trail simply stopped
mid-sentence, where the directions
should have shown, I should have known
without                           trespassing past the limits of Doubt.



Image By http://www.geographicus.com/mm5/cartographers/schoolgirl.txt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1810 described as schoolgirl whimsical Hartshorn map of Newfoundland.