Disinformation
I reach for a life raft
and
find only an apple
bobbing in a barrel.
Now I must grasp it
firmly,
like a stinging nettle,
not with my hands,
but blindfold,
and
with my teeth.
When I feel its fangs
I sense the snake
beneath the skin
and know some one
has slipped a serpent
into the I feel lucky dip.
Moon
when the glue of the universe
sticks to your fingers
the turtle’s snap
is a red-tailed kite
sky blue across the marsh
where now the will o’ the wisp
that ragged wanderer
in his tinker’s coat
all hash-tags and patches
frost crisps the leaves
dry cactus in a tilted rain stick
they patter and fall
three deer watch from the ditch
twitching their ears
gibbous this rabbit moon
night hung from the sky
who will gnaw next at the rind
of its round yellow cheese
Words
Waxing gibbous:
gibberish to most, or jabberwocky.
How now the moonraker
dragging the village pond for gold,
or the witch on her ducking-stool
accepted by God if she drowns,
but burned alive if she survives
and the Omnipotent rejects her?
Words rise and fall like trout to flies.
In words, out words, taboo words,
code words, the ebb and flow words
that see conversational tides
rising and falling, waning gibbous
beneath a failing lexicon, sacrificed
at the altar of barbaric speech to appease
the new gods and falsify the old:
nuance, shades of meaning, language,
meta-language, para-language,
raised, a supercilious eyebrow,
that lip curled in the snort of a sneer.
Roger
Writing in the Red Room at KIRA
I sit at my desk in the Red Room
overlooking Passamaquoddy Bay.
Minister’s Island peeps through
its bandage of low, thin mist.
Sunshine illuminates me
as, pen in hand, I write in my book.
Timeless, that photo, these words.
I will sit forever by that window,
deep in thought, writing in sunshine.
Losing Weight
First, you must study Nature.
It will make you aware that trees
lose weight by shedding in the fall
their useless leaves. Do they ever
grieve you wonder, when winter
winds strip twig and branch?
That dog who owns your heart,
he sheds his coat and shakes
away both water and fleas.
Dogs can lose weight
whenever they please.
Don’t bother to diet.
Step fully clothed
on the bathroom scales
and weight yourself.
Step off, and shed your clothes,
leaves, twigs, branch, and fleas.
Then naked to the world
step on the scales and weigh again.
I bet you’ve lose a pound or two.
Believe me … and try it.
True Love
Her voice in the night
drags me from my dreams.
But it is not her voice:
she has gone back home
leaving Clare and I alone.
Our sleeping rhythms have changed
and we wake each other up
when we unexpectedly touch
or startle at the voices in our dreams.
True love is so much more
than an exchange of rings
or a holding of hands,
especially when our lives
are no longer ruled by hormones,
and they’re taken over
by rebellious glands.
Diagnosis
(sonnet)
Diagnosed with a terminal illness
called life, I know it will end in death.
For more than seventy years, that end
has lived within me, walked beside me,
sat at my bedside, and shared my sheets.
We have shared so many things: laughter,
joy, victory, defeat, the soul’s dark night,
the winding ways of fortune’s labyrinth.
When cancer called, we faced it together,
and life won out for a little while longer.
Hand in hand, we are together again,
our ménage à trois, engaged in a three
-legged race, blindfolded, unsure of who,
what, why, where, and especially when.
Night Thoughts
(for Tanya Cliff)
The weight of the weather
with its dark clouds pushing
down on my shoulders
bends me to its omnipotent will.
I know my back doesn’t have
the power to lift up my heart
and soar above such heavy clouds.
I need a chariot of fire …
yet the clouds are so strong,
and the light is so weak
it won’t break through,
except in sudden flashes.
I hear the creak of sodden wheels.
Clouds blinker the lightning
as thunder crashes through my brain.
I listen to the pouring down of rain
and pull the bed sheets over my head.
Time
Where is time going
when it overtakes me
in its speeding car
and leaves me lumbering
along life’s highway?
It’s after five to twelve
and the morning has flashed by.
The clock is about to strike,
and the afternoon draws near.
It too will vanish, a milestone,
millstone tied to day’s neck.
I remember the old days
when the big handed pointed to XI
and the small hand pointed to XII.
Now the clock is starting to strike.
I have left the last gas station way
behind me and my motor’s failing,
and my car is running out of gas.
Secret Garden
Silent,
the children,
disappeared now,
hiding in their secret places.
So swift,
all our childhoods,
snatched suddenly away.
Only the echoes remain,
clinging like birdsong to branches,
fading slowly,
as an ever more distant past
trickles like water or sand
through the open
net of our clutching hands.
rogermoorepoet 