Birthday Poem (now we are 66 and still love to walk along the beach)

Speak now in full froth

As we crest and come ashore

Before laying to rest where

We shall sleep forevermore 

So the waves whispered to me

This morning while I sipped

My morning coffee 

Nature's eloquence  

Of late is wasted on me

Garbled on awakening 

With all her best words 

Evading my reach 

One is what one makes

Such is every poet's fate

No matter how the sheaves 

Happen to accumulate

Year after year 

Words tumble 

Along the mind's shoreline

Leaving at best little  

More consequent than

Sea-wrack strewn raggedly 

Across the high strand 

Life Perennial

What I love most about

Gardening is that every year

One gets a little more proficient

And likewise willing to undertake

A little more work

Last year the Joe Pie weed

And milkweed took root

Increasing this spring’s bounty

That’s what it means 

To live and think perennially

To suppress and encourage

As needed yet remain

Open to happy accident

To be constantly raising 

The flower bed stakes

And vegetables too

The payoff increases

Accordingly

The Iris

Before it opens

The iris is flat
And pointy as a stiletto

But when it opens

Oh my god

Suddenly it falls

Extremely agape

Almost shameless

The way it drapes

Itself - which is typical

Blue flower deportment

In point of fact from

Upward striving

In first position

To utter collapse

 

 

Spring Never Gets Old

 

Spring never gets old

As we do

Now that I celebrate its lyric 

With a limp all my own

It’s better than ever

More perennials than ever

To adorn my front lawn

If April makes such

Great showing who needs

May or June

Each moment of Spring

So full of promise

Is a lifetime entire

Complete unto itself

Life is All About Triangles

for my brother Hank

There’s one big difference

Between me and my brother

Whereas he has a prodigious memory

And has learned by heart 

To recite pi to 

More than 3,000 digits

I can barely remember

What year it is sometimes

Yet still I manage

To comfort myself thinking

Who needs pi really

Life is all about triangles

For most of us humans

Knowing how to progress

From here to there 

By making comparisons

Like me and my brother

All day long in disregard

Of the need for absolutes

Who needs one or the other 

When you can be both in turn

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