watercolors are hard

i’ll play my flute for you

I decided to build

I decided to build a tower in the valley

in my off hours. This is why.

The sun hits the grass in the afternoon. All morning

there is shade and at the hot part of the day the sun

comes to the valley. It is hot. Then you wish for some shade.

In the morning it is cold. Then I wish for some sun

There is an hour in the day where it is perfect.

We take lunch then. It is nice to drink

a bottle of white wine and share

a chunk of cheese and Hungarian salami

with the gentle breeze moving our hair and vests about.

Little birds pecking at the ground. Tweeting.

On special occasions we have raspberry torte.

Yesterday it was too windy so we sat at the library and drank milk.

I read two books of poems and you read the sports section.

We didn’t realize the day was over until the lights flickered

Then we noticed the sunset over the parking lot.

Across the street the fading light reflected

off the sewage overflow pond.

Somehow we summoned our senses and went

into our white car and drove the couple

blocks home. On the way home there were three

teenage girls walking and talking and smiling

I flinched at that stupid and happy thing that walked them.

Relieved of and fond of youth I thought there was something to be

said of growing old and fearful.

I drove 30 miles per hour and slowly turned

into the drive and into the garage. There was folk

on the radio. I was reluctant to shutoff the car.

You got out right away and went into our residence.

There is white everywhere in our place.

the counters, the cabinets,

the carpet and the tile, and walls and ceilings

the furniture, the paintings, the bedding.

I spent half the night cleaning.

The horrid crack between

the fridge and the counter is clean.

The red stain on the carpet

underneath our loveseat is gone.

The old clothes that were too small are a quilt.

My feet hurt. The dryer lint is empty.

The bed is made with clean sheets.

I hung up your button ups.

Then I locked the door and went to bed.

I don’t know where you were. I think

you were playing poker or reading numbers.

I slept like a big baby and in the morning you gently

woke me with kisses on my face and brought me

breakfast in bed –cream of wheat with coconut.

When I got out of bed in the morning

the air in room was cold compared

to the bed and then and there

I decided to build a tower

so the morning sun could reach us

and the tower could shade us in the hot

part of the day. I figure after I am done

the whole day will be perfect

-not just lunch.

If the wind knocks it down

so what-

Plus we’ll be able to get out

of this valley and see the horizon

A Kid Who Turned

In the city there is a kid who turned 500 and nobody remembered her birthday or sent her a belated greeting or waved when she walked down the street after her dinner of corndogs and celery sticks. The old man with the huge mustache who sits on the café table nursing black tea stared through her. The dog with the lady in spandex ran with her head up but looked slightly to the left without nodding or smiling or barking. The kid had an extra dollar fifty so she bought herself a yellow balloon and one lollypop. Then she rode her scooter to the cemetery and coasted through the sprinklers. At dusk she skipped stones on the pond and counted four baby ducks. Later at night she bathed in chocolate pudding and braided her hair with licorice and went to sleep on her cotton candy blanket under the stars in the backyard of her peppermint city. The last great maple syrup bottle sang all night with such great longing and cracking the kid wished to be grown at last so she could become a scholar and wear silk and dig up a cure for smallness and her stupidity. But in the morning she was still a kid and so she went about her pop drinking and jump roping and tried to ignore the folding sigh of hopelessness

Roots Of Perception -Work in progress

A Person Thinks -A Person Looks Sad

 

People aren’t used to seeing a person sitting and thinking.

That makes a person look sad. Really a person is just thinking

about biscuits.  There are so many different kinds of biscuits

a person would have a hard time deciding on what kind of biscuit

they would like but if a person had some sausage gravy

then that person would want a flaky biscuit.  

Sometimes a person needs a biscuit -just a plain biscuit