IN SHADOW 

Shadows on

the sidewalk 

mimic the pattern 

of plaited, twisted

branches above.

Walking, I think 

there is plenty 

of clearance

but there’s not.

The crown 

of my head

butts up against 

a low bough

I don’t see.

Jarred, the tree

shudders and shakes.

A dark form

untethers itself

from the black 

tangled limbs

on the pavement

under foot

and flies free.

A cawing follows. 

Shadowy thoughts

can roost

in the mind

like crows

we don’t know

are there

until they surprise us 

and then quickly disappear 

leaving an ebony echo

in the wind.

ONOMATOPOEIC

Bugs buzz.

Their sound is incessant,

annoying, biting, invasive.

My rationalizing mind

is like this:

vindicating, justifying, excusing.

When I believe what it’s telling me

I become what I am hearing.

I become onomatopoeic.

I become the sound 

of the bug. 

I become the buzzing.

Best to squash this little beastie

before it starts its thrumming.

Before it takes me out of Nature, 

my true nature - which is 

still, quiet, and calm.

Best to silence it.

The onomatopoeic prick 

of its sound 

poisons with 

its invisible stinger.

When I get caught 

in its insecticidal web

I never find the poetry 

in its poeia. 

Never!

And that's not good.

Or should I say:

its web never has me 

hum with surprise or 

the deliciousness of delight.

THE STADIUM

a stadium 

where every voice

calls out our name

grandiosity

doesn’t suit us

better to become

small, ordinary, prosaic

make our thoughts

insubstantial, take

the pageantry

out of them and exit 

the stadium for good

AN AGORAPHOBIC WALKS OUT OF AN ARENA...

There is a space within

that terrifies him.

It is a potentiality– 

as large as the Astrodome– 

too enormous to bear.

So he makes the world 

outside his door

his enemy 

and locks himself inside

his ramshackle home

and becomes a shut in

thinking, behind 

his windows and walls  

that he is safe

from all and any potential 

danger, by being a recluse.

Little does he know 

his fear of going out

is really the fear 

of going in.

So the joke’s on him:

his own company

is his confinement,

it the bones on the joke.

.