Persimmons hang like orange Christmas spheres
and tantalize this squirrel in the yard.
She climbs and stretches so her chest appears,
and bites the fruit that is no longer hard
the way it was two weeks ago. On guard
and geared for predators, I take a shot
behind my window glass, and she is not
aware of me, absorbed in sucking juice
and chewing flesh like sour apricot,
that’s ripening to hint of maple mousse.
(Dizain)
The theme a week ago was gratitude –
eight minutes meditating on the rug.
I crossed my legs in peaceful attitude,
and ocean-breathed as if it were a drug.
The guide said now be glad to be imbued
with grace you haven’t voiced. I gave a shrug
to realize I love irritation’s touch,
that makes me wake and innovate so much.
(Ottava Rima)
I’ve co-existed with the critters here –
the garden is their home as much as mine –
and wasn’t overbothered till this year,
when building on my eastern boundary line,
and now the north, has changed the biosphere.
Too many skunks no longer seem benign.
I’ll have to find an expert to repel
this surfeit of small neighbors, and their smell.
(Ottava Rima)
For five days there was nothing on my list,
and I leaned into leisure all I could,
aboard my landboat sloop and comfort-kissed,
admiring tile, glass, gas flames, and wood.
Beginning at a luncheon with a good
old friend, I then embraced full solitude,
and hunkered down in down. My only “should” –
avoiding too much celebration food.
(Huitain)
Pre-natal yoga seemed a likely choice
today: attending warmly to my girth.
I tried to cradle belly and rejoice
although I’m over 70 on earth,
and 40 years beyond the younger’s birth.
Today I didn’t hate my globe of fat
that at 16 was toned, completely flat,
and unproductive actually. In truth,
I love my abdomen. I’m thinking that
I gestate wisdom now, in place of youth.
(Dizain)
They told me history repeats itself.
I heard it from my father and in class.
I found the phrase in books upon a shelf,
with liberty to browse. It came to pass
I got it, reading fiction, history:
the cruelties Dickens caught, Voltaire and Swift.
I noticed awful similarity
in Austen’s arguments and Orwell’s drift.
But repetition now accelerates –
the cycle shrinks as pixels blink and spread.
The body politic degenerates
at speed – depravity is never dead.
And virus surges yet, that wasn’t solved.
It’s bleak to see the way our kind’s evolved.
Imagine that you’re driving slowly here,
when someone darts too fast for you to stop.
You can’t avoid collision – though you veer
and brake, a bone is snapped and tendons pop.
You’re traumatized although you’re not to blame,
but sympathy and aid is not for you.
The injured needs attention, and the aim
is succor for the downed. That’s what we do.
So when a friend explodes in mental break,
with snap hostility and slamming door,
for sure we feel your mystified heartache,
but our concern for who flipped out is more.
It’s weird to hear you, sighing, calibrate
our empathy, abetted by your mate.
I’ve lived in these parts all my adult years,
enjoying weather and topography,
admiring how my neighborhood appears,
inhaling bay-washed air. Diversity
abounds and has accustomed me to see
the postures in the streets, the manner how
the Oakland nod goes up initially –
a greeting that is nothing like a bow.
(Huitain)
We visit Mom fortnightly after work,
but sometimes cause arises to postpone.
I travel, or a banquet throws a quirk,
or Covid makes her want to dine alone.
Declaring in our daily telephone
exchange, regret my brother chose delay,
I then receive a text from him, with groan
that Mom decided no. That’s just their way.
(Huitain)
Deciding that I’d want some mushroom soup
for dinner on a wet December night,
I caught a bus to ride a market loop,
to buy ingredients to cook it right.
Securing broth and fungi, I was quite
delighted to attain by smartphone app
the lucky-numbered bus – I saw the light,
embarked, and made it home without mishap.
(Huitain)
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