Micro Rage
Butterfly at my window—fluttering by
I always think someone goofed long ago
making a dictionary entry to say apropos
"flutterby" but he or she garbled the syllables
It's called a spoonerism, named after someone
who once flubbed words intentionally for fun.
I like to shake a tower, rather than bathe in a tub
but this nomenclature of winged fluttering insect
bugs me both because it engenders a vision
of a yellow stick of butter arcing through air
and because when spoonerized it makes sense
far more than the supposed correct name.
Their colorful wings do flutter about my garden
giving animated beauty to my often failed attempts
at having bountiful flowers to distract the eye
from encountering the brown spots in my grass
Can butterflies scream at a closed window
not understanding glass but irate all the same
that there should have been more blossoms
for a nectar meal, cursing me in a futile tirade?
The Ocean of Life
Dreams of departed friends—vaguely remembering
paths diverged, paths terminated, paths obscured
ghosts in my mind from when I was someone else.
There is certainty walking backwards that I never knew.
She, me, they, us, uncertainty gave the world excitement
Each of us lived in the common chaos of onrushing futures
Like sand castles at the edge of life's ocean of opportunity
while waves of events surged and sighed around us bringing shells
We were hermit crabs occupying shells we found
as opportunities to be who we sought to become
meeting new friends, losing touch with older friends,
dragged by the tide of time into our lives apart
Seagulls laugh at us now, barnacle covered stones.
I remember now things that could not have happened
Dreaming of things that almost did with someone
who is unlikely to be today who they were then.
Even people I still know today, talk with at times,
are not the same, they too are departed friends
sitting across from me as I remember what might
have been had the excitement of uncertainty differed
The stone I live as today still could change, maybe.
cracks and gouges remind me of changes in my past
haunting me of what was and what might have been
in different tides of opportunity with departed friends.
Innocuous Life
In the field a mouse nibbles—hungry I imagine
like me, trying just to live, perhaps to love.
I don't know what a mouse thinks about
if it thinks at all, we may both be underestimated
as the snakes of fate slither around us flicking tongues
in the field where we live our lives somewhere
breathing subtle breaths we scarcely notice,
smelling subtle scents we accept as the ambiance
of our world, like the tastes of what we nibble
feeling within warmth, cold, hunger, pain,
hearing distant sounds as warnings, or peaceful
songs from birds on wings, or branches of trees
doing things to try and be significant or such
that rises above the mouse eluding the snake,
though I know, to the snake, there is also hunger.
The Cycle of Life
In silence cherry trees bloom—rustling in wind
surrounded by bobbing green leaves on branches
where birds perch singing as insects buzz about.
Sap oozes from the ground up trunks and boughs
to feed the leaves that gather sunlight into sugars,
waiting patiently for the pollen of other trees
waiting with wide open blossoms on stems
seeking sexual enervation that ripens over many days
into the cherry that succors the seed within for
forming with suitable soil somewhere another
cherry tree seedling sending roots in imitation
of the boughs and branches but downward in dirt.
The silence continues as caterpillars crunch leaves
and bellowing elk graze while fickle water drips
as rain transforming nutrients in dirt into soil for roots
to ooze sap upward into tender twigs extending leaves
skyward seeking sunshine falling past the forest canopy
silently,
subsequently,
sequentially,
year after year
twigs become trunks and branches on boughs signaling
at some point the silent expression of blossoms
Morning
Morning emerges from darkness as the earth turns
And I emerge from slumber before or afterward,
Refreshed, or not, my mind seeks and learns
The status of a simple life continuing onward.
They call it dawn in the metaphors we live.
The state of a new beginning starting anew.
Each day has a morning dawn on what we give
The name consciousness to feelings we sort through.
We claim to think as we emerge in the morning fog,
But feelings dominate our lives, directing our thoughts.
We claim to have rational reasons for our slog
Through the day explaining our oughts and nots
But the reasons all have mornings of rationale revealed
In inevitable retrospect to have emerged from desires
That were always directed by feelings we concealed
During myriad decisions made as a life lived requires
