TENDER AND TENUOUS

Everything seems

so precarious

these days

with so much wind,

fire and smoke,

and rolling blackouts

in the mix. This

morning, in one room

then another,

quite suddenly

and by accident,

sugar plum

tomatoes and

push pins fell

from their counter-

tops to the floor

to make a carpet

I dared not walk on.

QUESTIONS

Quarks and red dwarfs

wouldn’t exist,

you might say,

without them,

the instruments of science.

Questions, framed

just so, and deftly employed

are like microscopes

and telescopes, eyes

into the human spirit.

They allow us to see

realms within ourselves

we might otherwise

be blind to.

So think twice

before you offer up

ready-made advice

to someone lost

in life’s mystery.

Where listening

and curiosity meet

is the quantum

mechanics and cosmology

of self-discovery,

a music of the spheres

that knows no scale.

DEADHEADING

These days

my thinking

is made of them:

blossoms,

dry and rotting

stalk upon stalk.

Deadheading

is what’s needed

to keep this spoilage
from spreading,

from seeding further.

May this poem

be the shears

to spawn new growth.

And the prayer 

to the perennials

that could flourish

in my mind.

THE CURTAIN

A life spent on stage

acting and directing

is now holed up

in a hospice ward

swaddled in dementia,

cradled by cancer.

A curtain

divides the room.

This veil between,

this undulation of light,

enraptures the man

and has him pointing,

 as if to say:

There, on the other side, is

where my next play

takes place.

His arm, getting heavy,

falters, falls.

His lids bow

to the curtain.

Eyes close

to dream.

This thespian life,

more and more each day,

 gives sway

to Silence’s soliloquy 

and rounds

itself to Sleep.

THE TORTOISE and the VIOLIN

It is not a perfect instrument.

I sampled many before I bought it.

I chose it for its oaky-mellow

lower tones.

For the longest time though

when I played it

I couldn’t help but miss

what was missing:

the upper register

my other violins had had.

Funny I would long for something

that wasn't there

that I knew wasn't

when I decided to make it mine.

Walt Whitman said all this

another way:

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not

something else.