Magnetism

Moths to the flame
Every dog looking for their day
Bears to honey
Boys to mischief
Tongues within the gaps of missing teeth
Fingers pulling loosened threads
A single shoe along the road
Coins upon the rail
that fly in the ointment
weeds thriving in a crack
the sole black sheep among the rest
the needle in the stack
the voice from deep within the desert
finding refuge from the rain
once in a million

me on any porch in a storm

Dew

The sun’s sword cuts the hedge
in darkly dappled slices
helping to hide my morning paper.

The wet yard follows my feet

back inside and across the kitchen floor.

Dew has always seemed such
a curious mystery to me,
like powdered sugar
dusted over the waiting world.

A wet sylvan velvet that arrives 

during the darkened morning’s gloam,

painted in perfect tiny droplets
upon every blade of grass,
then unveiled by the rising sun.


I have always thought
its arrival should be marked
by the chime of a small clear bell.
 

One that says the margin is coming
on the busy typewriter
hammering out the story
of today.

Summer Stirs

Summer will rise up, infused,
when sunshine mixes with the rain
and warms our blood and bones.

Trees wiggle their fingers
and shake their roots awake,
unfurling leaves and petals
into the pageantry of spring.

Beguiling with it's best intentions
the sun leaps from cloud to cloud
shouting, "I’m back, I'm back!"

4.1

Just an ordinary day with nothing much amiss.

Crazy's in the air I’m certain, or maybe it’s just me.
All things seem the same, almost, ordered and mundane.
But for my daughter, the game is quietly now afoot.

So I smile and wait till lunch time comes her way at school
and she savors that first bite of the treated Oreo
that crunches with what really wasn’t ordered.

Perhaps the cookie’s texture will spill the beans
of its tampered freezer time.
A whiff of mint or expectant squeeze

could betray the day
you can never quite foretell.

I can only imagine her face
when her mouth opens wide

to shout aloud, "Toothpaste?"

Ahhh, The Ides of March are nothing
when April has begun again
and you've been got by dad.

Happy April Fools Day