Just like me

 And as I chewed on my cud

it occurred to me

My calf was just like me

My calf was just like me.

Suddenly

 More than

Suddenly the ordinary 

Became extraordinary 

Always be attuned

To be swooned 

Hummingbird moth amid azalea

Santa Fe

 Santa Fe by john clare ...   I shall take my canoe and paddle up your narrow spine, The bent shaft stabbing time after time, Into your sluiced apart shallow ribs, Scraping your underbelly upon the rocks hid. And when your gurgling mouth is found, I shall then turn around, And repeat again the skinning, Until you surrender in the place of my beginning.

End of gloam

 End of Gloam

It could be called from gloom to gloom had we not a hope within of reunion, thus we go from glory to glory. The Gloam the interlude between the last rays of day and the night. The still time when we pause to reflect upon the passing day.

I shall always

 I shall always

It’s the trees I will remember 

in the barest times of their December

to the covering canopy of summer

I shall never lament the pausing

but for a moment upon the journey

 for trees I will gladly take the fall.

Rocco

 Rocco

2004-March 5,2016

Today has been deemed

good boy day

Freed to jump and play

Wet and shaking from retrieving

Time and again

Never more tiring

Tis but a short swim

To the other side

And soon I shall meet you

Forever more

In pools of living waters to

Abide

Squirrelly

 Squirrely 

Dinner always came precisely at five

As she would shuffle for the elevator

Five floors up

It was not the eating she looked

Forward to

But the sneaking

The hiding back for the squirrels

Who she fed

Who could climb down 

Head first 

She longed for claws

Of a life without falls

Of landing on all fours

Outside these palatial

Fifth floor ledges....

Pappa’s dammer

 

The killing fields

The killing fields

John Clare Stokes

Every year we warn the azaleas 

the redbuds and the dogwoods

wait upon your bloom

wait at least until the mid of March

When winters blasts have passed

But they ignore our pleas

Fill out the bare limbs with leaves

Bloom in the finest display

But winter is a subtle killer

He only needs one evening

And in the wee hours of darkness

Spreads his frost upon the flowering

By morning the land is white as 

Tombstones

As winter moves on

And Spring mourns her loss.

Wellborn

 Old Wellborn. We used to visit the large two story home west on the 8th Avenue brick road next to the tracks. It was overgrown and the old man, I believe his name was Walter, would come out and chase us away. I got a few photographs before he spotted me.

By these rails

 By these rails

I have dwelt with these rails

All my days upon this earth

Stacked and split 

Carried and set

And I sit beside these

Rails and I tell

Of all those passing

To the azaleas bloom

Upon the other side.

Mary Posey