Poem written at the Kanas Center

Lately life has acquired

A beneficent hum 

Friday nights at hospice

Compost Monday or Tuesday

Back and forth from

Science to art

Just like life itself

True of Mr. Apology too

Far too deep in the weeds 

To know what was happening

Wednesday night

We watched a movie

By Thursday feeling blue

The Best and the Worst

This poem illustrates what happens when you fail to properly heed Rabbi Bunim’s advice about the importance of keeping a coat with two pockets. In each pocket, the Rabbi says, you should put a slip of paper, on one of which has be written “For my sake was the world created”  while on the other it says “I am only ashes and dust.”  The Rabbi stresses each slip being better suited to different occasions, the two of them are therefore better held apart in separate pockets.

This poem illustrates the peril and insight that result from resort to a single pocket.

*******

Yesterday around sunset

While walking my dogs

I put a bag of dog poop

In the pocket of my fleece

Along with another bag

Of doggie treats

And when I got

To the garbage can in town

I threw away the wrong bag

And continued home

With a pocket full of poop

The best and the worst

Become interchangeable, it seems

That’s sometimes how life works

A Mind for Mulch

What I tried but failed

To explain to my wife

Is that of the various things

I have come to truly believe

Over the last decade of life

Composting turns out

To play a key part in 

What goes round the bend

To the next part

Vital like sex

The same mixing

Of like like and unlike

Whatever turns up next in

The three card monte

Of the afterlife

The Second Phase of Spring

The confetti begins

The second phase of spring

When the tulips have burst

On the scene

The cherry is almost ready

While the magnolia petals

Have surrendered in number

Supine on the lawn

It’s all new and almost over

At the same time and

Li Shang Yin shudders

With delight

It's a Very Weimar World

 These days it seems

It's a very Weimar world

Poised on disaster's brink  

An era for scams and shell games

And for screwball comedy

As my brother reminds me

A la Lubitsch and Chaplin

But don't you just wince

When you remember how 

The plot unraveled last time

* * * * *

This is the last poem I intend to publish on the Lampoetry blog, at least for a while.  Please feel free to make yourself at home with all the other stuff I've shared here over the last 10 years.  Mi casa es su casa, speaking virtually, that is, here in this little corner of the metaverse. 

In the meantime, I have taken up a new residence online, on the Apology blog, which can be found right here, and this blog post is intended to serve as the baton pass, from one URL to another, as much like a hermit crab, me and my avatar scramble to a carapace nearby, and the shell game continues, at least for a little while. 

For the Star Magnolia on the Front Lawn

Every April 

The Star Magnolia 

Lights up the stage 

With its brief aria 

Performed in reverse 

In a spotlight of shade 

It reaches the high notes 

Before falling in a brocade 

Across the face of the lawn

The Germination Song

Well before I saw the first bud of the year

Had begun to open

I heard the first plink

Of the germination song

You know spring first

By the sounds rising

In the back yard

The dogs barking 

Amidst the rising chorus

Of birdsong

It won’t be long now

And I swear I can

Hear the gears turning

Deep in the soil

As the year begins

To sing along

Out of sight the gears

Of the new year have begun

To turn in the soil

Things coming along

The germination song

It won’t be long now

#haiku #germination