8. FIVE TO COUPLE - Seventy-Something, Geese in September, Geniality, Cephalopod, Bossy

The Seventy-Something

The seventy-something spry cow

Took her bull by the horns and asked, "How

Shall we manage to dance

With a splash of romance

If we can't get back up when we bow?"

_________________________________________ 

published 2007 online in Omnificent English

Dictionary In Limerick Form (OEDILF)

Geese In September

Two geese

yapping non-stop

flying low

over wind-wracked water

Paired for life

this old-wing couple

barking for Florida

bitching about the trip

"Why go so early

we'll hit the hurricanes"

"Flap it up can't you"

"Too many tourists

let's wait a month"

"Let's not"

And so on until they're out of sight

____________________________

pub. 2010 by Tower Poetry

Geniality - a triolet

You'll mix your genes when you secure a mate.

No one denies it's your unique birthright.

As breathy maid or brassy profligate,

You'll mix your genes. When you secure a mate,

In love or not, like beasts that replicate

(Except amoebas or hermaphrodites)

You'll mix your genes. When you secure a mate,

No one denies your genes' unique birthright.

______________________________________

pub. 2008 in Blue Unicorn

Cephalopod - limerick

Said the nautilus, "Cousin, keep back.

As an octopus, you never lack

For romantic, dark charms,

Like philandering arms

Or your cephalopod's inky sac."

___________________________________

Published 2008 online in OEDILF, The Omnificent

English Dictionary In Limerick Form.

 

Bossy - limerick

The bossy old cow near the door

Took a bull by the horns on the floor,

Looked her bull in the eye,

Said, "Moo moo and hi hi!

Whee! I'm udderly shot — I want more."

­­­­­­________________________________

Published 2008 online in OEDILF, Omnificent

English Dictionary in Limerick Form.

7. FIVE TO REFLECT - It Will Happen, Prescience, Caught, Potter, Revelation

It Will Happen      

On a Wednesday

it will happen

and when I die

I will be young again

I will have horn concertos

and offer my bones

to the herring merchant.

When all rise

in their coffins

to greet me

I will dance

on branches of palm

tracing the shadows

of my unborn cousins.

And I will sing aloud

to the clouds and waves

that I am free

to hold them in my arms

that Joan Kimball is dead

and no machine can bind her

and no medicine can drown her.

____________________________

pub. 2010 in Comstock Review

Prescience

In the far-deep low-dark time

of the now-full how-tell past

did you sense

what would happen?

Did you somehow know

it would be like this?

It isn't a surprise

is it?

______________________

pub. 2007 in Spare Change News

Caught

Dust motes

     pirouette on a spot-lit stage

     spin within this newborn ray

    

which left the sun

     eight minutes ago

     to penetrate my wavy pane of glass

which keeps a blower’s breath

     in a hundred year-old

     bubble of melted sand

    

upon which

     two hundred million years ago

     dinosaurs trod

Potter

Her son acquires a wheel
throws his own bowl
plays his own theme

with spoons on its rim.

She attends 
when he floats odd

ribbons of greeting.

The clouds in her sky

race only for her.

She knuckles memory

into a bowl
fires and glazes it

plays her own tune.

At night when earth turns
past day's blue shimmer

they watch the same stars.

________________________

An earlier version, called "Son,"

pub. 2006 in Perihelion.

Revelation

He tried to show

her

the who he thought he was

she tried to tell

him

the what she thought she needed

she sensed the promise of his hand on her arm

the stroke, a papery tassel

she sighed for a hearty caress

she shaped his words to slake her urgencies

read his accents in her ear bone

culled the man from her iris

carried everywhere his effigy

a painted cardboard pose

what was he truly

once her needs had reinvented

him

they cried when they uncovered their forgeries

they wept for what never

was

_________________________________

Earlier version pub. 2003 in The Listening Eye

6. FIVE FOR CHANGE - Spring Ahead, Leap Second, Headline Dread, Drought Next Time, Collector

Spring Ahead

That mood in spring you see in me,

a shrewd pursuit around the grounds

to change the chronometric face

on stove and car and wall and screen,

to press odd buttons, twist the hands,

as high noon leaps ahead to land

on One, refusing Twelve its solar mean.

All summer the slighted noonday sun

is not high noon until it’s one!

A larceny most subtly planned,

for now we reckon Daylight’s “Save”

has filched an hour that's not repaid

until the Fall when falling back

repeals a bureaucratic hack's

officially sanctioned sleight of hand.

______________________________

Earlier version published 2007 by  Blue Unicorn

The Leap Second

The government has added

a whole second to the year

because an axial wobble

slowed our terrasphere

by just that much -- one second --

as it rode the solar carousel.

Like spitting on Niagara Falls,

how could they tell?

________________________________________

A similar version was published

Summer 2007 by The Lyric

Headline Dread

Mara has forsworn

the news

no paper at her door

no TV

unlike me

if she

is a turtle

pulled tight into her shell

I'm a gazelle

in a plundered herd

whose gaze

samples the dance

of the cheetah

as it carries off

my neighbor

___________________

published 2003 in Mobius

The Drought Next Time

                        (Omaha to Denver)

Brown land

pocked with green.

Draftsmen's circles:

sprinkled rings

starkly seen

when you fly

the Central Plains.

Barren ground

chemically altered

mechanically watered

by giant rotating arms

flaunts vast, verdant dots

tens of acres wide

precisely circular:

a pan of viridian tarts

strewn across the prairie.

The land

pressed to nurture

alien greenery

sucks ever deeper

from an unseen aquifer;

delivers costly treats

to an unseen balance sheet.

____________________________

Published 2006 by Spare Change News.

Collector - limerick

Beth collected ten wrought-iron gates,

All acquired from eBay in crates.

She opened the boxes

Of palings and lockses,

And ranged them about her estates.

___________________________

pub. 2006 online by OEDILF (The Omnificent

English Dictionary In Limerick Form)

5. FIVE FOR WATER - Otter's Claim, Fish Eagle, Belaying Pin, Windsurf Wonk, Catboat

Otter's Claim

Below the dock

we spot a mound

of shells wave-winking

from the river mud --

an otter's winter forage.

We’d left the bay

before November's

horizontal winds could harry us

and dash our boat

against the ice-clad cleats.

The creature must have scavenged far

along the ragged bottom

to snatch its fare

and shuck these nacreous lids.

It must have climbed

many frost-white mornings

fur dripping

mussel in mouth

to sit here upon the wharf

to skim these husks

to sample

the empty riverscape.

 ______________________

Published Sept. 2006 in Avocet

Fish Eagle

Sprawled on a rock I watch

the tree-walled pond

its commerce drenched 

in heaven's mirror.

An osprey mows the air

over and over

back and forth 

across the still pool.

Head down

watching the dark water

over and over

she traces a grid

as regular as a chess board.

Over and over

patient as a grand master

then a hover

a check.

Fierce flight forward

driving aslant

she charges the surface

like a skipping stone.

Angling up

with a tail-jerking fish

in her talons

she climbs the air currents

levels off and lands

to work

over her prey

on the dead limb

of a live oak.

_____________________________________

An earlier version was published in Avocet, March 2004.

Belaying Pin - limerick

For rigging on ancient tall ships,

A belaying pin helped with the grips.

A sailor could cope

With all manner of rope

Lashing lines around pins on his trips.

___________________________________________

Published 2006 online in OEDILF, The Omnificent

English Dictionary In Limerick Form. (www.oedilf.com)

The Windsurf Wonk - limerick

To skim o'er the waves while you stand

On a board with a sail may seem grand,

But a boardsailing ride

In light winds that subside,

Might force you to swim for the land.

________________________________________

Published online 2006, with the title "boardsailing," at the

Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form  (oedilf)

Catboat

Even though she hugged the tiller tight           

to keep the little sailboat’s bow upwind,

the craft, that fickle "cat," just grinned.

It side-slipped on the swells, without the least

response to the skipper’s useless fight

to keep its heading straight, its one sail trimmed.

The helmsman, unaware it wasn’t the wind

or waves, pressed hard to lee to set it right.

This boat she’d rescued, committed to the light

from years discarded in the woodland dim,

appeared to go its separate way on whim.

Just now she turns to catch a startling sight:

the plywood centerboard that should have hung

beneath the hull to keep the course direct,

its layers adrift, unglued from gross neglect,

is floating like a flag, a kite unstrung.

Thus like a spouse who’s forced to accommodate,

knowing the fault was hers, the separation,

she squints ahead, plotting a new direction,

and ends her useless fight to dominate.

Tiller and sheet in hand she alters course;

allows the failing craft to head downwind.

Landing at a neighbor’s dock, chagrined,

she ponders what should happen next---divorce?

______________________________________

Earlier version pub. 2003 in Mobius.

4. FIVE OUT-OF-DOORS - Rhymes from a River, sun gold, Meadow Walk, Cold October, This River Hill

Rhymes from a River

A stream so full a swamp seems dry,

A dawn, a golden scar. 

A chain of mallards drifting by,

A chain of geese afar.

A willow shading bloated spill

Above a quick mink's wake.

A tethered rowboat not quite still,

A glint of water snake.

A tree crown shading early light,

A red root sucking mud.

A sap vein coursing its full height

Above the river flood.

A human touch, the dock protrudes,

An angle thrusting out,

A wooden stage for solitude,

A span to nurture doubt.

________________________________ 

                                       After Christian Wiman

                     Published in Measure, Fall 2008

Haiku  --  sun-gold

Sun-gold edge

to weeping willow leaf...

brief, airy dance!

__________________________

Pub. by Aurorean March 2004

Meadow Walk                        

I stride out of pines into sunlight.           

The stutter of the red-tail,

a sickle raking the sky,

spells despair.

Furry field creatures, flee!

I stroke thuriferous milkweed,

part rasp-edged brush,

seek the field’s secrets:

ear-taunting rustlings

and  raspberries

tart on the tongue.

Give me a year to haunt this clay:

to ponder, to muse

to pour seed pearls

into hourglass cases

that measure the movement

of worms

and sounds

that haunt the cave-curtains

of ground hogs who lumber through

comb-like meadows

with stones

near brooks bearing fish to the sea.

__________________________

Published in Avocet, Summer 2004

Cold October - limerick

Cold October made four hairy bees

Soporifically lie at their ease,

Each apparently dead

On a thistle-stem head,

Until warmed in the sun by degrees.

_________________________________________

Published October 2011 online at OEDILF (The Omnificent

English Dictionary in Limerick Form) under the dictionary

entry "at one's ease."

This River Hill

                                                                                     

I step from rock to rock at the water’s edge.

Cold wind flutes across my ear.

My heavy shoes loosen igneous grains

to join their fellows on the beach

where bleached shells and pulverized granite

attend the river’s offering---float of weed, bloat of bass,

coot feather, cola can propelled on wave’s breath

through rocky shallows to the strand.

This island rock, this river hill

this eroded base of a mountain peak,

was once higher than Everest.

A mile-high glacier,

bent on decapitating the mountain, 

grinding, scraping, with granite fingernails

clawed

our Paleozoic stone.

My shoe prints won't last on this beach.

Soaking roots curl along the shore to a low ledge.

Easy leg up, I walk the slab that flaunts

its glacial streaks across the shelf.

What Indians walked this river shore long ago

whose ancestors left Africa heading East

across Siberia, the Pacific, the Rockies

the Great Lakes

to meet my forbears

whose ancestors left Africa to head West

across Europe and the Atlantic,

to fetch up on this river plain?

What boulders in the St. Lawrence were dropped

by the glacier after scraping our rock rim?

Those  humpbacked, outsize cobbles

clumped in a watery course---lurk

beneath the sky's reflection.

Bane of the keel boats,

I've bumped them myself

with my centerboard.

Now I wander rudderless

along the wave-dampened sand

and wind-dried shale.

I hunt the glacier's longevous traces

and find its spoor on our Cambrian coast.

I am the rover, I am the witness

invoking the ghosts of ancestors and ice.

_______________________________________

An earlier version was published Nov. 2004 in Thema.  A book version

with color photographs by Richard A. Young was published by Blurb Dec. 2009.