Billy Boy

 Billy was the daredevil one of the three brothers as I recall.

Hard for me to keep my rare cousin’s names straight at first.

He always had a tilted head, burr haircut and a sheepish grin, 

a more “Summered” older kid than I.

We younger ones watched fellows like him with awe,

hoping someday to wander with the same easy swagger.

When we visited, my dad would mock and tease all of us boys 

with grins and proclamations followed by a wink. 

He would caw at us his false remorse,

“You better hope I never die, or you'll be the ugliest men in the world”,

Billy would always smirk and lob a drawled retort

back to the uglier sender and the source.

Amid dusty Jacksboro Texas cricket-filled nights, hot days, a yard full of small

army soldiers waged ceaseless wars. Behind their house lived the Gazette, 

full of ink and oil smells and clackity-press percussions. 

We got to feed yesterday’s old cast letters, and our secreted curse words,

back to the molten maw of the Linotype pot, never to be seen again.

The shop was carpeted in discarded pages, their wording not yet right.

We patrolled on BB-gun hunts down alleyways with Daisy rifles tight in hand.

The wire-perched birds flapped away to the safety of the sky

as we strode through town. Bottles and cans were not so lucky.

Then back behind the post office, the heavy-oily-onion air swirled out of Mary’s Burgers, 

whispering of hot and salty French fry heaven.

Ketchup was always free.

As a Tiger on the town football team, Billy roamed Jack County’s miles

till life's call urged him to another campus. Perhaps a million days ago, 

we lunched with him there a time or so until he faded away.

While cleaning his gun, one warm and sad May afternoon, Billy’s story ended.

A puff of smoke, we blinked our eyes, and he was gone. 

Surely Billy Boy was never meant to be

the ugliest man in the world.

Chirp

evening cricket songs

  woven in to golden light

-small letters of love

Flamingos

Flamingos lounging in tropical waters along side exotic flowers

You stand so still and I have not seen you duck your head for the longest. 

Perhaps your are full from an unseen early morning breakfast?

So poised, tall and pink, nothing is of concern to you

standing on your wire legs.

The entirety of their silly flamboyance seems oblivious

to store, with all our eyes and shuffling sounds, 

even the  children are no cause for alarm.

They must be proud birds, perhaps they are all ashamed to be on clearance

here at Walmart

2 for $20.

Packing List

For me it is a cry, a wail, of pure unsatiated yearning.

So many years of moves 

and changes 

and towns.
Ever more moving boxes and new class rooms and faces.

All so wonderfully new at first, 

to learn and meet and explore. 

Only to leave behind again and mostly forget 

as a small bit of past.  

somewhere else, now no longer new.

No one stayed in my pocket or my conversations. 

They faded away. Just gone 

and papered over with aa new address.

So many years of places and small stories have flipped by 

and are now too deep in the deck. 

Too far gone. 

Just gone and replaced

when no one was packed up 

and labeled on my box

and sent along with me

to help me remember 

who they ever were.

Dog Tired

 The Dogwood leaves are tired and drawn by the 31 

 hot and dry August days.

They dangle, painted bruise-brown, with the pallor 

of old raisin-tasting wine. Far past its prime.

Their green is long gone.

Their work is done,

They wait to fall 

away.

Losses

last years Robin hen

returns to prepare her nest

-culls the cold blue shell

Home on the Rain

most Portland days

this mossy yard stays sodden

feeding cold rivers

Between Two Mirrors

 

Time. Its name is whispered, scrawled, and mumbled in so many ways. Its face reflected in countless mirrors and dissolved into the many waters of the world.

Seasons of growth and learning, dead leaves and then new. Wrinkles, stooped height, growth rings, wisdom, minutes then inches, infirmity, rotting wood and patinas of every hue.

The flow from tide to yet another tide, months, calendars, addresses and anniversaries, cakes and cards, greying hair, the muting of senses, the cutting of young curls, births and mistakes, victories, and death.

We measure people with small pencil marks on door frames or by clothes that no longer fit. From seed to stem then leaf, to cone and broken limb. Then a harvested trunk with some of it as sawdust scattered on the floor. Hair changes color and fades in color and vitality.

Christmas, survival, recovery, mountains fading slowly to hills, the dimming of stars, first impressions and then urns and good byes, the resolutions, the dreams and trophies and the long kept dresses and jackets and the glory of what was then.

Time brings it all to bear with only the quiet whisper from the sands that continue their steady fall

 

from the top,

 

down to the bottom

 

of the glass.

Rejoice

  

Tear down that sculpted,

perfect mountain that lives in your head.

Its intimidation is not for all,

and most certainly not for you.

It won’t tell you of its jagged faults

and glacier-scoured rock, and will

surely not whisper of the legions of fallen snags

and centuries of eroded pebbles and sand

that are now missing. All lost to gravity,

drawn somewhere downhill.

 

Scores of acres lie scorched and bared by fires.

Scarred firs still trying to fully breathe, tremble

in winter winds up past the scree slopes

on its southeast side.

Legions of beetles chew into the bark

of its sheltering forests, killing the branched

beings with a million tiny torturous bites.

Delivered daily in unison

 

That perfect mountain’s stone heart once flowed.

Growing upward from the depths as molten

magma, its heart did finally stop. It cooled

and lay hardened for eons

and grew no more.

 

It casts a mighty silhouette.

Impressive and prominent, sometimes snow-topped

with orange and red hues in, “the golden hours of the day.”

But it is succumbing to earth’s eternal pull.

 

Your seemingly mighty and tall mountain is far from perfect.

2020

 

In one hand I hold

The wetness of tears, the rain that falls upon the robes

of people and hopes everywhere.  Lost hopes, lost jobs,

hunger, sickness, death, isolation and loneliness, protests and pain,

frustration, hoarding, politicization of the scenario,

pot-stirring, personal and national debts that tower above us all.

Beliefs, not news nor facts.

To fill the other hand, I have to find

the awareness, to look for and see the light.

In the other-worldly quiet nights, long walks, a flowering spring

that dazzles because I have the time to see it unfold

before me with clearing air from less used machines,

the working of jig saw puzzles with my family

and listening as my daughter discovers the quiet satisfaction

of the NYT crossword and rediscovers here love of the piano,

experiencing spring like I had not done in 50 years or more.

 

Friendliness and courtesy and communal help

for those in need seems to be also blossoming around me

 in the small and not so small parts of the world I bump in to

But If I squint my eyes just right, I can see the good, the hope and care

wearing a shirt of fear and worry.

This time has blessed us with a flaneur’s world, while it has cursed us with an anger,

a dread and divide that may not ever subside, or so I fear

as I hold my breath and wait.

Paid

 

my work is for a salary,

but when I capture the right words,

then mine is the golden pay.