not always the hero

ok, so, just to show I’m not
making myself always the hero,
i got off the crowded bus smiling,
saw a flash of white

flapping large as a napkin
right on the front of me.
my zipper half way down,
my shirt was sticking out.

oh, darling you'd think i hardly hear you

for me
no mail for decades.
nary a post in the box,
only cobwebs on my cobwebs.

no need for an in box.
that space by my door
could be permanent no peddler signs
for every holiday occasion.

and now this,
my sixty-fifth birthday year,
i have already received
more than sixty-five solicitations,

not from a chick
to walk me across the street
down to the corner bar
and whisper “watch both ways” into my ear.

what arrives is another offer
for an inexpensive hearing aide.
i’m sixty-five - they’ve got my number
and must be selling it door to door.

Bee Gone

You best bee learning . What’s a bee for? Bee's wax. What do I call this poem? Is it Bee gone or just Gone. I’ll work that out later. The next part concerns you.

Because you're dead doesn’t mean you have nothing more to learn. Let's start there.

You don’t just die and get angel food cake with ice cream and a gold beanie. No, seems there’d be a school for the dead to teach what they didn’t learn on earth.

Straighten ‘em out, work ‘em a bit to make saints out of them; or do you think they just get sent back to earth, recycled stupid. I suppose it could be. Let ‘em stumble along again on their own, and see if they can do any better. I don’t know how it works.


Bee Gone


sitting on the back porch
smoking, having morning coffee
a small bee came zipping around
persistent, wouldn’t go away.

i thought perhaps it could be the spirit
of my dear friend, or my uncle
coming back this warm summer day
checking out how things are going.

staying near
making circles
all alone
going fast.

i blew smoke on him,
brushed him on his way,
not to be disrespectful,
but, he’s got to learn.

The BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico began late May or early June.
I guess I may be stuck there.


tough time

tooling down the road
a wild turkey on the right,
standing where you’d be
if you were thumbing a lift.

i blew past him doing fifty plus.
geeze, he was big. big as a dog.
had he heard of the oil spill, do any of them know?
is that why he was out walking? was he stunned?

this is a tough time
appalling, unequaled.
great damage has been done
to the waters, to the life, to the earth.

and we are the caretakers.
oh, what we have we have left for our children,
this legacy we’ve created,
all for pieces of silver.

i thought to continue to write here, to divert attention
away from thoughts of great sadness - disaster.
let me tell you - it isn’t easy, it is sad.
nothing is easy now. so sad.

time machine

standing on the corner
watching all the girls go by
listening to Dean Martin sing that
in 2010 Ohio.

i’m in a chair,
93 degrees outside,
M. in the kitchen,
Dean on the programmable radio station.

a 1908 Saturday Evening Post short story on my lap
that’s takes me back to the old West.
and I’m in a chair in 2010 Ohio, M.’s in the kitchen,
Dean is on the radio singing for us.

you want a time machine?
pick up a book,
turn on the radio,
92.8 degrees outside - so says the Internet.

the son also sleeps

it’s a doggie dog world
look it up.
that cracked me up when I read it,
you know it has the clang of truth.

it’s a doggie dog world,
that’s why my son is having therapy
for a shoulder he took on a bad job of rock climbing
and that doctors sewed upon.

taking naps is safer.
his daughter sees summer slipping away.
he denies the truth,
however, being father makes one old

and consequently forgetful.
i don’t think he hit his head.
hope the old fart remembers
to brush his teeth and change his shorts.

daughter is right,
summer is slipping along at high speed.

m. is locked in at high speed warp factor,
and worries too much.
i worry if she is too tired
to make something good for dinner.

last week she picked blue berries
while i waited,
sat on a bench, read,
and between customers talked to Pseudo Farmer

who lives in Ohio two months each year
in a house built in 1822, fantastic, huh?
and the rest of the time is in Montanna,
no relation to Hannah.

Ohio is 90 degrees,
has been for a month
and will continue warm.
sweet corn is good.

i am too.
half as good as her blue berry pie,
i ate it.
these are words to live by.

solar eclipse

beneath tall ancient sculptured stone monuments
a half hour past noon, waiting.
excited anticipation from crowds gathered on Easter Island,
for scientists proclaimed that Pacific island on the path.

then murmurs hushed, eyes opened skyward
as a moon blanket covered sun, brought five minutes
of daytime solemn darkness and stars.
earth’s seventh full solar eclipse of the 21st Century.

i am old and have yet to witness a total eclipse.
that it good, for it means
there is an event ahead, both moving and spectacular
for me to look forward to.

paper in my pocket

paper in my pocket
making note
preparation for doing
like setting the table

dad did it.
inadvertently, he taught me,
jot thoughts down
afore they get away.

time ticks quicker

notice what’s going on?
mowed the lawn two days in a row.
usually it’s right to wait a week.
we're moving in quick time.

tell someone please
turn down the gas
on the time machine,
obviously it’s running too fast.

many flowers blew into bloom
within a pair a days.
now don't be thinking this is paradise,
life is more like a rolling pair of dice.

blowin' across the highway

political division of the sexes
an obstacle in long standing tradition
the world may someday surmount
or complacently continue to avoid.

like a garbage can
blowing across a highway,
you better stay alert.
try not to cross paths.

continue to not think about it,
most times you may be lucky,
or do right and change your ways
before one has your number.

teeth is all

brush my teeth is all
she asked me what i was doin’
teeth is all i'm doin’
teeth is all

then seven-thirty and we were driving.
she wanted to pick blue berries early
before it got 90 plus humid degrees.
many, many, a record many pickers had the same idea.

through a heavily wooded area on the way,
the guard rail ahead at the crossing came down.
oh no, a train, i moaned, then zip - like that
a locomotive and one train car flashed by.

forty feet ahead of us a buck deer crossed the road
from woods on one side to woods on the other.
two small young deer came out undecided on the road.
we waited 'til the adult female rushed them across to the woods.

at another bend in the road
was a large wild turkey in the brush.
right at the side of the road's where he sat.
a big guy, geeze he was fat.

back home after berries, a blue jay had hit our kitchen widow.
looked open, too clean? don't think so, more than likely
he was thinking distracted and flying too fast.
was lying dead when we arrived. m. got the shovel, buried it.

and the day began
with m. waiting in the car.
only needed a minute to brush my
teeth is all.

mocking bird hill

came out of a song, the name did.
skipped in on the wind, stuck like discarded paper
beyond the fence where Hoppy lived in a shack
at the town dump, on a knoll above Mud Brook.

he was resident care taker, barroom dart baller,
and sometime crossing guard downtown.
a tiny fellow in second hand clothes, worn seaman’s cap,
one leg way shorter than the other.

we’d examine approachable edges when we went dumpin',
finding some old wood piece, or metal gadget,
antiquated discards, to pick up, cart off,
recycle and transform into inventive service.

a busted end table or a bicycle,
an unbroken bit of colorful depression glass,
an original period lamp in need of rewiring,
a long, long time before anyone spoke of toxins.

today not a trace is left of that place on that knoll,
plowed and replanted clean. the dump's been moved,
gone with Hoppy, as are most of those who remember,
the rise over the creek called Mocking Bird Hill.

train 28

that’s the date in June 2010.
i want to differentiate
cause see i’ve talked of trains before.
in absolute way quiet three a.m.
that’s when they come, you know.

with first a subtle vibration in the tracks
from twelve to fifteen states away.
then i got up ate, slept and ate and drank and slept again.
three days later Goliath Machine approaches town,

of course total darkness.
not a star out tonight,
they only come like that, at night you know.
steam rolling vibrational thunder.

with a whistle
a warning
hear it

You
You there
I mean you
Take warning - Watch yourself,
I am coming.

shakes ducks eggs in the marsh
corn kernels rattle off cobs in the fields
and homes from their basements trough foundations vi-
vi-vi-vib—vib-vibrate.
god o’ mighty it’s Heavy Metal son of a bitch
clobbering everything.

i’m three blocks away from the tracks
and total down to dust destruction,
every home, bird’s nest and dog house
tween here and there destroyed
by the merciless rattling shakathon.

yet, like a mystery,
somehow
sleep comes,
deep mellowing sleep.

and then magically
when first bird tweets,
all is rebuilt by dawn,
everything, up and down the streets,

including fillings, crowns and molars replaced
and neighborhood groundhogs back in their burrows,
robins eggs return to their nests,
no cracks in the sidewalks, no more.

all is well again, healed by sight
of first morning light
when i awake and go to the window
and look out that way
to see what happened.

summer storm

summer humid, you can't believe.
oven hot and closet still.
something brewing west,
thick heavy sky darkness rolling.

rain races, beating, hail, high wind - boom,
lightning cracks a quarter mile away.
what’s hit’s on fire
or gone blown to hell now, i’d say.

half hour later, all’s still again,
a bit cooler, lone wren cries loud,
accounting for it's family.
with that we’ll end the day, show’s over.

talking to oneself

talking to oneself,
i did it today,
and know when i say
that’s not what it is at all.

it is speaking to the spirit
of friend or loved one,
absent for the moment
by a nick in time.

they've cut down the big tree

they’ve cut down the big tree today,
bet it’s two hundred years old.
was old fifty years ago
when i was a kid.

before i ever thought of old
i saw it when i rode past
heading for the beach
on my bicycle.

recognized it then as a giant,
the largest trunk in town.
maybe old as the town. course fifty years ago,
they tore the town down too.

called it urban renewal
when they leveled the town.
promises were made,
but they never rebuilt it.

not the town, only city offices
police and fire department
had one police car then
have seventeen now.

urban renewal was for the city
officials and city workers,
not the down town, where the people
walked, shopped and gathered.

now this tree taken down.
makes way, it’s the future.
i’m telling you now,
they’ll never rebuild that tree.



Save some of the world as we know it for the children.

news out of Africa - they are talking of planting trees east to west, coast to coast to rebuff the encroaching Sahara desert.

strange how we've made God

strange how we've made God
into our image and likeness,
when we were definitely taught
it was the other way around.

tough time

tooling down the road
a wild turkey on the right,
standing where you’d be
if you were thumbing a lift.

i blew past him doing fifty plus.
geeze, he was big. big as a dog.
had he heard of the oil spill, do any of them know?
is that why he was out walking? was he stunned?

this is a tough time
appalling, unequaled.
great damage has been done
to the waters, to the life, to the earth.

and we are the caretakers.
oh, what we have we have left for our children,
this legacy we’ve created,
all for pieces of silver.

i thought to continue to write here, to divert attention
away from thoughts of great sadness - disaster.
let me tell you - it isn’t easy, it is sad.
nothing is easy now. so sad.

first squirrel time

out on the back porch
saw the mother squirrel
for the first time this year.
didn’t recognize her, they look the same.

in the center of the back yard
her back to me,
sitting up, chewing something.
i went way around right so as not to disturb.

around the pond,
then saw the frog.
the big one, on a lily pad,
watching me.

i said he was there
to meri on the other side,
who saw the red squirrel,
and went inside to get some nuts.

was soon feeding the squirrel
who i noticed was very pregnant
but stayed one foot near.
remembered us evidently.

both returnees from last year season.
as we fed nuts to the squirrel,
big frog made his noise,
wanting a little attention also.

the frogs use a good calendar

the frogs use a good calendar,
cause right on time they’ve begun.
all last night the big one did a low “earp”
on the average of once every thirty seconds it sung.

at 24 to 36 second intervals
average 30 seconds between each “earp”.
window open, while lying in bed,
three a.m. i was counting it off.

it is temperature with crickets that
determine the number of chirps per minute.
cricket chirps in 14 seconds plus 40
equal the exact temperature in Fahrenheit

with no external ears frogs either hear well
or the subsonic particles of their call travels far.
the nearest other pond is a quarter mile,
and when it rains they come and go a hopping.

number of cricket chirps in 8 seconds
plus 3 determine temperature in Celsius,and that's it.
frog croaks per minute change with temperature, however,
Celsius or Fahrenheit formulas can't determine jack shit.