Waiting out a Summer Storm

Electrical rage,
fractured dimension, flash
and fissure of mortality,
Occurring, it seals itself, but
in that trice, between extremes,
light and noise, divine voltage,
vision of another side.
Sometimes, you think
the wall will shatter;
sometimes it cracks
so close, you know you
could leap through, but if you
did, what would they do?
What would they do
without you?


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, July 12, 1987)

Hawk

Squirrels hide and bark
in water oaks hanging Spanish moss;
crows and cardinals taunt,
circle and dart, yell
(that's all they can do),
while the hawk from a kill
watches with those warrior eyes.
When I stand to admire him,
he flies.


(August, 2013)

Polio

At five, I couldn’t walk.

Doctor’s diagnosed me with polio.

A pretty word, polio,

and that short for poliomyelitis,

still pretty though.

The Greeks were good at that;

some Romance languages good, too,

but less so, while the English is ugly:

Gray…bone.

In any event,

my mother laid hands on me and prayed,

and I was cured.

It doesn’t bother me that you don’t believe,

but why the look of disgust?


(July, 2013)