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.
Life
A champagne glass
bubbling to the brim,
your voice over the phone,
sparking and sparkling.
“I’ve got a new job,” you say,
and fresh horizons
open before my eyes.
I see your ship sailing
towards undiscovered lands.
A better life beckons:
more responsibility,
higher pay, a move away
from the routines, once fresh,
now boring, that hold you back.
“Well done. Congratulations!”
I hear you start the car.
“Take care. Drive safely.”
You accelerate away
driving into the unknown
dimensions of a newer life
beyond this life,
a life I will never know.
Rain
Parched, the dry brown grass,
taut the earth, tighter than a drum.
Footsteps echo a rhythmic, hollow sound:
marimba music with death tones.
No joy in the barefoot beat of heel and toe.
For months now, no rain has fallen.
The fire crackle is feared in the forest.
Elsewhere, trees catch and the woodlots blaze.
What good are showers, dry thunder clouds,
building, always building, but never releasing
the surging tide that this commonwealth needs?
We yearn for a thick blanket of cloud to gift us
with the long, slow soak of an English spring.
The grass speaks out with its many tongues,
each as sharp as a blade, and calls for rain,
for liquid to pour down from the sky and end
the dryness of drought. We need to fill the wells,
to let the streams overflow with the bounty of water.
We need the green, green grass: not this baked,
bare, arid crunch and crumble of taut brown earth.
Bird Flu
Silent the mountain ash
burdened beneath berries
burnished from yellow
to orange but where are
the birds who bounce
and chirrup and chirp
silent now their domain
the bird flu gripping
at fountain and feeder
and stilled their voices
gone their brightness
banished from this garden
that suffers now in silence
butterflies adorn the cones
and bees bumble in bees’ balm
but where oh where have
our beloved birds gone
chickadee and phoebe
sparrow and goldfinch
robin blue jay and nuthatch
gone gone gone all gone
and only the family of crows
young and old croak on and on
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.
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.
Wordless Wednesday
rogermoorepoet 