Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

Dense gray monolith, weightless, cresting on cross currents
Phantom of tiny droplets; neural web of beads, infinitesimal
Millions or billions or millions of billions
Attracted to one another
Like static follicles, magnets, lovers’ lips.
It waits.
Existing on nature’ whims:
Before jerked away on an angry breeze
Or dispersed or evaporated or plummeted –
A change of pressure, wind, atmosphere, temperature
The mutable forces of weather hold the gentle monster’s fate.
The bottom
drops out . . .
layer
after
layer
Sheets upon the earth
One into many
Many into one
A flood forming, fluxing
Dispersed, harmless, and floating forlorn
Churning with the soil, roiling over asphalt, tickling grass, flushing gutters, pelting windows, wetting hair, flowing and growing
The monolith mixes
With life

Last Night We Walked Together

Last night we walked through London
Arm in arm and holding close
Like old beloved friends
And lovers
Two of a kind
Both of one mind

We sailed through crowded thoroughfares,
Noisy and chaotic,
Bustling with grit and characters surreal –
Our strange street fellows a romantic blur,
Snow dampened daguerreotypes . . .
Lace and velvet
Too much rouge
Dusty coat tails
A stained cravat
Worn leather boots . . .
A seedy Victorian crowd.

Through which we sighed and marveled unscathed.
Your left arm was in a sling.
You wore a thick black coat.
You let me ride upon your back
Wrapping my grey wool-clad legs ‘round your tight torso;
My arms ‘cross your shoulders
Nuzzling my face to your neck, your scarf
Red, like my smiling lips, as I whispered in your ear.

You made me laugh.

We walked
It snowed
They bustled and jostled
We didn’t stop but laughed and laughed
And smiled with our eyes

Of one mind
Brisk and breathless
Alone together
In a world of ageless bedlam

Last night we walked together
In my dream,
My dream of London

The Reading Club

Every winter the library has a reading club:
Read books because we live in Michigan and it's winter;
Win prizes

I always imagine housewives and little old ladies
Sitting at home in their tacky Christmas sweaters
Curled up with some hot tea and scorning the outdoors
For romance novels and the company of their cats

And then there's me. I always look forward to joining.

Even though it's really not that exciting.
I rarely actually want the prizes;
I never win the drawings;
And I don't like the Bingo categories
Telling me to try some nonfiction or a local author

So God only knows why I dutifully fill out my contact information
And rearrange sticky notes trying to make the things I already want to read
Fit into the appropriate categories
Just so I can turn in a slip that, Scout's honor, I read 4 books this month
And pretend like I actually want another tote bag
Or a library-logoed ice scraper
And that I will actually have time to fill the entire card
In my already insanely busy life
For the satisfaction of a gift card to Applebee's


And yet, there's something about filling out that sheet
And turning it in
And knowing,
if nothing else,
I joined something.
I finished a few things.
I left another coffee stain
on another cherished page
of a thankfully borrowed book.

Cracked Earth

Annoyed by not knowing
Cranky and growing
In impatience and impulsivity

. . . live in the moment . . . but look
before you leap . . . do not worry . . .
be not hasty . . . good things come to those who

Hang onto the hard-tried proverb,
Searching for signs
Like the old woman
Searches for her youthful lover
In a wrinkled old face

Is this the face that, in age,
Is all the more the man she loves?
Or one more feeble façade,
With common flaws mistook for fate,
faith,
fidelity

Plumb the depths of intuition
Weigh the pros and cons
Till plumbs and weights
Have splashed the well to dry –
Cracked clay, baking in the sun.

A black umbrella in an ancient, papery hand
Shadows the fissures, like wrinkles, that web
The once supple, now sandy, sole
Blocking out a sun gone dark

A feeble step away and
The hard yellow earth exposed
To one pregnant, blue drop from above

Tepid is the Sin

Tepid is the sin
Cautious, undecided, neutral –
Damned.

Better to sin boldly
Or not at all
Than to dally in ambiguity;
To count your chickens
And analyze why they didn’t hatch

And why someone else’s did;
Why you didn’t measure up
Or down
By standing still.


Better to tack
Than to stay the course;
To make your destination
Standing up or on your knees,
But never lying down

Tread upon by the world
Because you never told it no,
Or yes and doubted with the ferocity of belief,
A doubt turned to purpose better
Than an appeasing whimper, a stodgy agreement.


Stand up, stand up
Burn brightly and shine loudly
Or go plummeting down in flames
To rise again a phoenix;
Whatever you do,
Don’t forget your lighter –
It’s easy to Fall in the dark.

Narrative Dabbling in GRE Vocabulary

She assiduously studied antediluvian history to assuage her mother’s demanding educational expectations and simultaneously attenuate her ties with her unwanted banal boyfriend, whom she longed to aver as her ex. Instead, she allowed her hatred to burgeon until it reached a caustic stage in which the tension was almost corporeal, as if it could be cut with a knife. She began to long for the use of corporal punishment, but instead relied on deprecating comments. The craven young man had such a dearth of courage that he failed to stop her belittling of him. He adopted a feral outlook on life, both Hamlet and Tarzan, as he thought his gloomy thoughts out in his wild cottage in the woods.

Walking in the forest one day, he became the target of depredation by a desiccated old witch, who otherwise spent her time issuing diatribes on the present state of her profession and the diffidence of young converts that led them to try so little. She preyed upon him in his own lack of confidence, taunting and scaring him. In reality, the woman longed to disabuse the general population regarding the nature of witchcraft, but instead she dissembled as a traditional witch, and was sure to be entirely dogmatic on the subject whenever questioned.

Suspension

He climbed the narrow stairs,
Forced the swollen door,
And tossed aside his keys;
Sluggishly kicked his shoes, one by one,
Onto the wearied wooden floor boards;
And took three slow steps into the kitchen.

Empty.

He closed his eyes
And drew one strenuous breath.
His sigh ruffled the calm of the cool, drafty air.
Blind fingertips skimmed a dusty countertop,
One hand reaching out as two feet stayed planted
In darned socks, once healed by mother’s hands.

He pushed his toes, hard and slow, into that roughhewn floor,
Lifting tweed heals, millimeter by millimeter.
As his head crept toward the tired, cock-eyed fan blades,
His hair began to ruffle in the calm of stale, artificial breeze.
Higher, Higher.
Follicles drawn upward as if by static, helpless in midair,
Palm pressing hard an already battered counter space.
Lungs laboring to sustain some life.



Melancholy is a lifeboat,
A deserted bus stop between Happiness and Despair.
But Melancholy is no place to live.
It’s merely a rented room, with an empty kitchen.



He breathed in (the pain! – crisp and worn)
And it meant he was still breathing,
Strung up by poignancy,
Suspended by feeling,
In that damned unfeeling kitchen.
He just hung there. And hoped.