(A little tribute to one of my special talents.)
The Tale that Wags the Dog
Once upon a rainy day, A soggy doggy went his way
To find a warmer spot, and dry, When, from the middle of the sky,
All of a sudden, fell a cat Right on the dog and whomped him flat—
The sad conclusion one can draw Is, someone with dyslexia
Was on assignment to make rain, And in the turnings of her brain,
Confused the “and” among her cogs And started Raining Cats on Dogs.
Invocation
From the settling of the evening to the whispering of dawn
Lies a tenebrously winding way that wanders bleakly on…
What’s ahead is hid in veiling; what has been, lost in a mist,
And with strength and spirits failing goes the wayfarer, who kissed
Fond farewell to all familiars, bade goodbye to every known,
And set off to see tomorrow; now it seems all hope is flown.
But a flicker in the darkness sparks the vision of a wing,
And the silence now is shattered as a voice begins to sing!
Glorious, the song is lifted in its swelling, sweet refrains,
And the wayfarer is gifted with new courage in his veins.
What a loveliness is in it when such music comes along
To illumine every minute; what great powers in a song!
When the journey seems unending and the dark rules every vale,
For whoever needs the tending, let me be
A nightingale.
Shades of Indigo
Ocean or sky, it’s all the same; liquid or vapor, fluid, sky—
Look for the stars and wonder why you can’t remember your place, your name,
Your hopes, your fears, your heart, your dreams, or anything like a concrete fact,
But only sense, faintly, a world intact when the air and sea converge their streams.
When the blue engulfs both thought and time, what is the measure by which you live?
How many tears and breaths must give their blue to make the world so sublime?
If Beauty Dwells Inside
If beauty dwells inside the mortal heart
and soul, what dark impediment can be
so strong that we’d forget, incessantly,
to let it rule and be the greater part?
Have bitterness and poverty of care
for good and kindly things the weight and sway
to force the love of beauty out, away,
and leave a wound of emptiness in there?
What fault in us could any cause invent
to trade our greatest gift for grief or hate—
can joy revive, or is it left too late
that we grow wiser, love, create—relent?
Let us let go of emptiness, grow whole
by filling it with Beauty, heart and soul.
Quiet Companion
In the cooler corners of my crooked little room
There gleams an iridescence that defies the chilly gloom,
The pale enchantment of an eye that never shuts in sleep
Or wavers in its glowing gaze, whose watch is wont to keep
A careful, mystic, present love that guards me from all harm
And teaches me her secrets when I curl beneath her arm
So I can rest in confidence with this companion, whose
Great beauty is to fill my soul, for that she is
my Muse.
Brown Recluse to Black Widow
Never fret, my darling;
Never fear, my dear:
If I had meant to murder you
You wouldn’t still be here—
But I prefer the gentler sort
Of crime, soft as a breath—
Embracing you with all eight arms,
While kissing you to death.
All Tied Up in a Bow
Tidy packages are not
the sole solutions I have got,
but of the puzzles in my path,
few fill me with such rage and wrath
as that I cannot seem to find
what I have lost from in my mind.
I’ve lost more thought than many hath;
Does that make me a psychopath?
Don’t fret, my pretties, yet, for I
am not a wholly rotten guy:
I’d bump you off, but you should know,
I won’t (for certain sums of dough)…
and if you can’t afford the fee,
I’ll parcel you out tidily.
Precious Things
Copper in the morning hours and gold at peak of noon,
And sparkling like a thousand gems until the silver moon
Highlights the constellations of diamonds in the sky—
None has a richer treasury than Nature has—and I.
Storied
The house on the lake, awake, asleep,
Has legends to tell, and secrets, keep,
Of seasons fled and of lives gone by,
In whispers, hushed, like the distant cry
Of an owl that’s flown on her muffled wing—
The house on the lake holds everything
Behind closed shutters and boarded doors,
As tightly as novels protect their stores
Of stories—the ghosts of bygone make
The pages turn in the house on the lake.
Art-Colored Glasses 