I ride the bus with students frequently,
and here’s an observation lately made.
They’re college kids, who quite compliantly
behave like every rule must be obeyed.
They seem to read the caution that’s displayed –
Stay seated till we do not move at all –
as if at age 18, they’re each afraid
of what would be at worst a minor fall.
(Huitain)
The mom is doting with the neonates,
but once a baby’s aged to six months old,
the woman opens up abrupt floodgates –
impatience pouring over uncontrolled.
There isn’t space then for a child’s hurt,
unless the injury needs stitch or gauze.
Her offspring grow accustomed to her blurt,
ignoring her, avoiding giving cause.
Her first-born tried for years, at first confused,
exasperated by the age of five,
but words were worthless. Mom was not amused,
and so the child managed to survive
another dozen years at home (and whole),
by learning to shellac her gentle soul.
It’s not too late to make a new beginning,
although the year commenced a month ago,
and dawn is past, and I am old, I know.
I have no goals for trophies – I’m for winning
a little better health: a way to slow
the march to dark; a gently lengthened glow.
They may be the effect of stuttered sleep.
Deleting cannabis could be a cause.
But I am dreaming nightly, and I keep
the memory of many scenes. I pause
in rise to consciousness, from nothing deep –
I surface from a shallow pool. No claws
or specters threaten – the vignettes are brief
and ordinary, absent fear or grief.
(Ottava Rima)
It’s mostly not an age-related ill.
She’s ancient but her memory’s not shot.
Her hatred’s from no side-effect or pill.
It’s mostly not.
If you remember vigor, you forgot
she tapped it from a fountain of ill-will.
She never laughed. She didn’t hug a lot.
And when we dared show feelings, she would fill
the space with her complaint or judgment’s rot.
You want to state the cause is age’s spill.
It’s mostly not.
(Roundel)
When he was 1, his interest in the world
so notable, his gaze reminded me
to see the trees and flowers that unfurled
before our eyes, the sights so gorgeously
available, resplendent, magically
arrayed. Too soon a screen kidnapped his mind.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away by three.
He may spend several decades nature-blind.
(Huitain)
Existence seems a precious state of being –
a rare and lucky possibility,
with creatures capable of somehow seeing,
to finite age before mortality.
I wasn’t born an ant (and that’s appealing) –
I’m able to sense consciousness and feeling.
I wasn’t doomed to be a pet or food
(I’m human and can diagnose a mood).
And human-born, of people, I’ve the blessing
of never lacking sustenance or roof,
and seldom suffering unfair reproof.
I’m female and a Jew, but I’m not stressing
from racist acts or bully words. To date,
it’s like I’m charmed. And I appreciate.
A 2 raised to the power 5 results
in tallied years since they had their affair.
For 10 days then, two middle-aged adults
conversed, exposed, laid every detail bare.
Outgoing both, they’d neither had a share
in any love so easy to convey.
And though since then they haven’t coupled, they’re
still treasuring those memories today.
(Huitain)
I bought the cottage 15 years ago.
Its genesis in 1944
was guest room in the yard, where it won’t show,
behind a single-family shingled house.
A college town, the place would undergo
progression into flats to rent, then buy.
An H.O.A. of 5 at last, I know
I’m lucky to have separate walls and door.
The front house often fails. It’s not my woe.
(Magic 9)
Accused of thinking she knows everything,
she’s smart enough to know that isn’t so.
With every step of knowledge furthering,
she glimpses how much farther she could go.
And when she tries suppressing signs she’s bright,
she fails to pull the bushel really tight.
The lumens leak. Her fellows see the beam,
and claim she values brains to an extreme.
Perhaps she does. She’s willing to admit
it to herself and maybe to you, too.
She can’t say that it’s inappropriate
to cherish such. The other point of view
she tried, and boredom drove her fast away.
She wants companions who can think and say.
 | sputterpub on Old Haunt |
 | zumpoems on Old Haunt |
| sputterpub on Master of Destruction |
 | groomie on Master of Destruction |
| sputterpub on Vacuum |
