Right as Rain

Most of us know by now

a lie when offered one.

Sometimes we pretend its shiny

and something marvelously new,

like 'you look beautiful today'.

Well, I'm no idiom, 

but if little white ones cause no pain

a lie can feel good and right as rain.

Since Christmas is coming I have stocked up on pine candles

They all said it was dead.
The marks were obvious signs. The color,
bad news. Nothing could be done.
We knew after consulting with the experts
the day was coming,
but it was out there somewhere, solid and waiting,
until that day became today.

Needles glistened red in the sunrise,
the birds stayed away,
yesterday there were thirty crows
don't tell me a bird brains don't know.

Sure its pusy sap has made a mess,
parking under there a last resort,
but the smell and shade worth the week-
ends raking, complaining, venting,
and meditating on the smells.

The gang was all there prepared
to greet its last day the moment it broke,
move it or lose it, officially tagged
no parking here today.

Neighbors gather around like vultures
just outside the attack lines, the cone zone
pacing, bleary eyed.
And some have wheelbarrows
to take pieces of the carcass for themselves.

The orange man in the boom box
bobs and weaves while he makes
his perfect cuts with moving precision.
A chef on deck asea.

They are operating ruthlessly as I write this,
my son still asleep under its bossom soon
mastectomized. The windows are behind
plywood, in case a limb fights back.

Our mailboxes are gone for the day
Christmas is on its way, deliveries delayed.
This is no time for merry anyway.

Fifty feet tall and forty years of giving breath,
gone in a days work of slaughter and toil.

The crane in the sky screeches
as it chokes off major arteries
as a support staff of the savage surgery.

We were hoping for some empathy,
gloves instead is what we get, a slab for the back,
a souvenir, they said.

I'm hunkered down, don't want to look,
honestly I've never had one this big die on me.
I didn't know my breath would be taken instantly,
from piney oxygen deprivation.

When there's a hole, an empty space
in my skyline, I'll know
those mounds, like shallow graves
will mark the place of a time
where a perfect pine used to grow,
one that I called mine,
and the gnomes called home.



*If you have not read already, Before this Pine is Done was composed in tribute to this same deceased tree now resting in heaps.

Top image credit: By Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have the time? (Haiku)

Did you know the world 

was going to end? Ours? Yes, look

into the mirror.

Image By AlfvanBeem, Prague Astronomical Clock (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Together we Gather

Words arrived when we needed them
to see and say, plea and agree, demanding consistency.

Women sought with their eyes, wide in panorama;

Men relied on touch, sensing these were what feelings felt like.

Fire forged us from animals into sentient shapes.

Sharing knowledge and words, we found each other, 
warm and understanding, under what we stand for.

They will hunt for us, they will gather for us, we will dwell 

Together. To gather round

the fire, together around the light of desire, gathering aglow, 
or rathering not to know what It is 
It defines Us, We Are verbs, an assemblage, a clan, we plan, 
dream of Time, live in the past.

To bring, to arrive, going and going to go.
To gather, to collect, to pick up, two scoop, too yield, to concede, two agree to a degree, too cull, to sort by inference and deduction,

lighter, an objective gathering.

Just sew, we make something new

pucker up, drawn in to each other, folded over and plaited, 
by book and by sea on a fellow ship.

Elementary applications, melting sand transparently, forging steel inherently buried in itself, gleaning with muster,

the speed in which it grows, a group, a gainsay, a mish-mash, an array of We

These and agrees, those oppose those,
Clarity, Consistency and Redundancy 
was never so necessary or honored 
in collective perspective: soundsthesame “WeareOnelappingoverWearenOnestrongertogetherareWenot”

The power of We

                       over the One

Is the difference of disbursement over displacement, 
laying it out, spread thin, barely enough to go a round and around a gain.
This Time for you. This Time for me. We may or may not agree. 
We both name what we see as it is to be true, because we said so. 

This is what I’ve gathered so far.






Image By Mervyn Peake Glass Blowers Gathering (1943) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

To set the record straight about that time I fell of the Horner Bridge

I really jumped.
My friends did not go before me.
I was alone, despite any rumors
I may have been pushed.
The ones that love me
hate the gossip.
They like to think I simply slipped,
like one of those slippery memories.
But I was nevertheless aware all the more
of exactly where I stood,
the risk was irrelevant then.

As in suspension bridges,
where there's stretch and taut,
breadth and span,
it contracts beneath
your soles and whimpers under pressure
when you listen in...
I was standing with my arms out there
wide, back arched, chin jutted out, nostrils open
eyes closed and toes clenched
when something said
the more you know 
the more you die inside a little,
so I thought I'd find the middle when
I lept.

Except I lived to tell
I did it, I meant to
land on my purpose
or fail.
Ending the suspense
finally, in this way.
They say falling
I add willfully,
blindly, unafraid
and as it relates to history,
I fell hard
and only for me.

Image By Charlesdrakew, North Stoke Suspension Bridge (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Looking (for a) Glass

I don't need to tell you,
you've already found it.
I don't know how, most people don't
look that hard.
I don't know if I'm happy you did-
which doesn't move me to change
places, here.

I don't mind being stashed
cached in the very dark back,
be-hind-sight
out of the light.
I don't take up too much space-
which is why I haven't been cast out
yet, I'm easy to forget, easy to lose
sight of.

I don't detract from the ones right
in front, pulled out, polished
and put back so pretty-
most often that's not me.

I'm not fine or porcelain, stamped or etched.
I'm not clear but clouded with a chip
where you're likely to put your lip,
yet I still hold water and have dusty hope
built up that someone will reach over
the others for me.

Every time a door opens, I tremble.
I think they can see me too, like you
while I'm lying low, but no,
I'm just a back-up cup.
Overflow, you know when
extreme circumstances make
desperate measures, hot or cold
I will hold.

I don't want anyone else to see
all of these stains inside of me-
the ones you've already seen
and aren't afraid of making more
as you pull me up and take me out
-I pour-
wanting your bloody lips all the more.





Image by Aurélio de Figueiredo (1894) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Done with Do-nation

Dutifully unattached,
with nothing to hold onto
it is faith that floats
when nothing is left, you have done right.
Giving, to give, give it all away and pray,
my wish for you, my everything...
Be just, just keep what you have taken and leave me
alone since I have nothing of value
any more than I will be...
All that I could get, I tried to do for you...
To give, to want the best soley for you,
all that I do it was-
I shouldn't say it
in this way,
but I'm lost and cannot find
the kind
the need...
High and low I looked, sought, and fought
for more, yet there seems to be
none left in store
of what I have no more of
like love,
there's nothing more above,
I've given out more than I had,
none for me but I now can see
from looking down on thee-
Life seems much lighter when your empty.





Image of painting by Edmund Leighton (1895) The Chairty of St. Elizabeth of Hungary [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.