Bird-fare

I waken as summer sun filters
through trees, bright and still.
Marooned in an empty cottage,

a gathering fog portends melancholy,
no mosquito to break the tedium.
Dew on the balcony reeks

alfalfa, cedar and coffee.
On the tree’s cool side I load
feeders with suet and seed.

The morning’s ever-growing flock
arrives in a feather bluster
of squawks, squeaks and peeps.

Squawks fly in like welfare queens
teaching their peeps the scheme.
Even they need suet and seed.

I reload the enabling feeders,
a doom wings on the horizon,
lightening perches in the tree.

Night Lights

Out in the distance I see light
flashing, a star reaching out,
calling for help, a radio antenna
with a weak ‘here I am’,

a cooling tower strobe, watch out,
lightening steering the thunder, headlights
coming down the road marking trees,
eye-shine closer than I thought.

West End Place

for Totally Optional Prompts

I live on West End Place, I've been here for years,
it's a separated place for separated people
outside the west end of town on the moldering trail
from Olympia to a fishing boat on the coast,

that old trail rambles along the Sand River's
ragged banks. The ragged trail is replaced
with a moldering road that hauls timber
to mills belching plumes, and a log filled barge

replaces the fishing boat on the coast.
Timber haulers leave a clearing that's filled
with a hardware store, two restaurants,
and a newspaper office, they bring town

to the west end. Watery clouds
come in off the coast in ones and twos,
they bunch up and the incessant dribble
beats delight into the dirt.

Giving Ku

for one deep breath

for the old man
on a mailing list –
a pre-paid cremation

~

scrub jay teaches
don't laugh
raucous is ok

~

it's always dawn
or dusk
in winter's slant light

~

dark clouds
ride a wintry wind –
big flakes

~

small pines –
bird songs
are close

Ditch Dreams

Under high overcast the bright is everywhere
breathing dread and disquiet, no shadow
follows the wide woman walking before me.
I pass the backs of people absorbed

in looking away as I wobble and stagger
up the bottom of a rocky ditch.
I find a roost on the back side
and look across to a flooded pasture

with long legged birds. Soft gray,
slightly upturned bill, and black eyes
looking back, watching the lookers
roosting in a rocky ditch.

Hammer

On the back wall at the hardware,
past the bins of nails and pipe fittings,
hang a miter box, a spoke shave
and the hammers.
Trimmer, curve claw, finish,
and the 28 ounce straight claw framer
that sits well in the hand
and hangs from a belt with swagger,
a persuader for big wood and hard hats
under the autumn sun.
In the smell of fresh cut wood and hot steel
I block a joist, frame a wall,
set the rafter and hurricane clips,
deck the roof,
down a beer in the departing light,
and sit down beside
a hammer to get old with.

Circling the Drain

for Totally Optional Prompts

My life's a dirt road across a desert
valley, there's not much to look at.
It's a track across the rocks and dust,

a track bare of sage, a track
once in a while crossing another dirt
road that goes to a hardscrabble ranch,

a weathered corral, a dry spring,
a barn with hay in the loft, a young woman
taking feed to the horses.

I no longer read books in small print,
or long poems, I put on my 'coyote'
cap and head for Elko. Down the road

a dust plume is inexorably coming
towards me, it's been out there
for a while but now it's getting close.

Time comes when shallow thoughts
never begin, and I'm in a white
dust cloud circling the drain.

Nose in the Wind

as seen on Bolts of Silk

We call the dapple-gray
Snow-Ghost, we ride
her in the night

where the winter storms go.
We call the dog
Handrail.

Bug Splat

I’m a hover fly tripping
when waves of energy rise
in the hallway with crackling splash,
and sweep wreckage into the room.

Surges of seismic passion
allot hugs through the gaggle,
rob conversation and stop the air,
and I hang there, a splat on the glass.

A charisma hole sucks life
into the view of Lorelei.
The siren sweeps to sea
and beckons to the depths,

it’s no matter to the splat
why the earth moves.

Heermann's Gull

for Totally Optional Prompts

High surf splashes the breakwater remains
at Bandon, out of season and in cold rain
I drive the coastal highway north,
looking for something to eat. 'Open' signs

are not lit, eateries are dark windows,
from one seaside town to the next
the message is 'closed for the season'.
Through the fading light in Lincoln City

is one surviving row of bright,
behind yellow windows trimmed red
is a cookhouse team with foreign ideas.
I shift in behind a stir-fry and curry,

and pilfer exotic flavors
like a wily heermann's gull snatching
a meal in a flock of pelicans.
I linger with fading flavors until the pelicans

turn away, then I move to the next
rocky beach and rest for the night.

Dismal Swamp

A tangle of roots in the basement
of the swamp gathers bits
and sends them up
a tangle of branches to a bud

that bursts into blossom like a
Broadway star bursting on stage,
an eruption of toxic patterns
and fragrances, flashy as the star

for as long as they last.
Back in the basement a stew of sludge
brews a tangle of toxic germs
and fungus that erupt in the night

shadows looking for targets, victims,
blossoms on the ground.
Back in the swamp a tangle of worms
stirs around in the muck

looking for an easy ride
out of the basement.

Bigger Hammer

When I can’t get a grip I get bigger pliers,
and I own a lot of pliers now.
My glasses look farther
and closer than my old eyes.

I have a phone that remembers
numbers better than I ever did.
My arm gets ever older and I get
an ever bigger hammer, and some day,

when I can’t keep my truck out of the ditch,
I’ll get a 4-wheel drive with big tires.

In The Skin

for Totally Optional Prompts

I live with a grumpy tiger
in a housecat's skin, ill-fitting
skin that binds the shoulders

but not the claws. In early morning,
before the sun burns off the damp,
grumpy reads The Scent of Prey,

stares a dusty web into poetry,
listens for a feeding flock's chatter.
Grumpy lives with a food dispenser

in a white-cloud poet's skin,
an old retainer in the skin of a stranger.

Scattered Rivulets

for 3 Word Wednesday

Absent strength to pull night-thoughts
out of no-mind scatter I look down
to a notebook of crow feathers

scattered by coyote tracks, and fragrant rivulets
in the eastern window, to persuade
twisty schemes into the moonlight.

Package Ku

for one deep breath

unwrap a virginia rail
and out falls a pig

(This makes sense only if you know what a virginia rail sounds like.)
~

the night inside
a black vase
with a moon hole

~

ocean surf
leaves its song
on the beach

~

the fish container
is the bigger fish

~

pop the cork
on a jug of wine
out pops a poem

~

inside a seed
is the map
of evolution

~

a troubled mind
holds its own venom

Poker Brown Flat

for Sunday Scribblings

In the desert today nothing changes
but the wind. At dawn a meadowlark
perches on the tallest sage, a fence
lizard climbs a block of basalt,

then they don't stir. The sun paints
heat waves over a dry lake,
then the deep, stark wind smears
the paint, packs swelter between rocks,

spins dust devils through the sage.
At dusk the deep wind fades
like an old man out of breath
and no place left to go.