What good’s it do, to trumpet your own praise?
Is anybody listening to you?
What carries weight in each self-serving phrase?
What good’s it do?
For even if the claims you make are true,
they won’t convince a soul. Are there displays
that can inspire them to honor you?
You either know your value or you’ll craze,
attempting to compel I-don’t-know-who.
A bluster only windiness conveys.
What’s good’s it do?
Encountering a pattern on real walls
while using a salon facility,
projects me back. Now memory recalls
a time when talent hung where all could see
above a wainscoting. True papery
design that can be felt as well as seen
provides a touch so satisfactory,
it renders pallid my computer screen.
Go figure this – she focused the complaint
on one of two. Maternal prejudice
from her is never subtle, nothing faint –
go figure this.
What she deems cute is dull and obvious.
She thinks a gripe and blurts without restraint,
and any wound she’ll with a snarl dismiss.
I think she’d try the patience of a saint.
And as for me, I’m on the precipice
of critical – I never find her quaint.
Go figure this.
I notice Berkeley dogwoods every year,
when they put forth their multitudes of bloom.
My brother said they cannot flourish here
(our air’s too damp, there’s insufficient room
for roots to find the needed pedosphere),
but I don’t see impending any doom.
Today I aim to imitate the tree:
to stretch in light on earth, and simply be.
Chaotic as that photograph appears,
my gard’ner spent last week almost a day
engaged with rake and bucket, broom and shears,
and filled two bins with what he cleared away.
A neighbor planned and planted it ten years
ago, and now the yard’s a lush array.
I’m grateful for that erstwhile friend, but more –
it’s this, our local climate, I adore.
I’m guessing that she never really meant
those careless words. Some hours afterward,
I thought it would be foolish to resent
comparison insulting and absurd.
The other’s not alike – if there’s a bent
for acting like my mother, what I heard
is incorrect. The case is, every act
the speaker makes resembles Mom in fact.
I daily play at solitaire and win,
although sometimes it takes me several tries,
wherein I vary how I flip a card,
so there’s occasion when I re-begin,
or skip an easy move. It’s a surprise
to triumph when the dealt array is hard.
Go figure, for I don’t – my focus strays,
and makes me understand the greatest strength
of a computer, far beyond its ways
of doing math and recall. For at length,
I get that it’s a tool for memory
and calculation, but I do not find
it harnessed as attention aid – I see
distraction as a trait of humankind.
I woke from Wednesday’s dream at 3:15,
and spent some minutes savoring a bit,
remembering exciting chat between
myself and a companion who seemed fit
to self-reveal and seek appropriate
descriptions of my preference and eschewal.
I rose to consciousness and had to quit,
but hope another slumber brings renewal.
I’m pleased to read a message from the man
who comes when he has time and when I need
some garden help. I tend it as I can,
but lack the tools and heart to prune and weed
as much as necessary. Bushes seed
abundantly – the problem’s positive –
but he’s so busy now I’ve had to plead.
Tomorrow he has time and drive to give.
I’ve modified behavior once or twice,
and learned some lessons doing so, for sure.
When I eliminate a type of vice
I have to do refusing daily. Cure
that’s positive, adopting something nice,
requires that I start it small, endure,
and then let doing it supply the power.
I fail if I impose, at first, one hour.
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