September blew by
with the promise of little
and threat of battle.
Category Archives: POETRY
SWEET LITTLE OLD LADIES
This is the face of white supremacy,
the sweet little old lady
who lives down the street from me.
She praises the Walz-Harris and
Sherrod brown signs in my yard.
She gleefully says they make her happy.
I offer the extra signs I have to put in her yard.
She gracefully declines, “my family
would make it hard on me.
“So, your family bullies you,” I reply.
Taken aback I watch her smile fade.
“Yes,” she says,” I suppose that’s true.”
“It is just that Black people are so…”
her hands in the air waving away thought…
“They want to take over the country, but ought not.”
“Do you hear what some white people shout,
about taking over government to have their way?
Do you fear them taking over the country?” I say.
A look of confusion crosses her face.
I ask if she thinks every white or Black person
is the same, and if blanket descriptions are really O.K.
This sweet little face now looks away.
Then turns with a frown and admits it’s unfair.
I have family who are MAGA, too, I explain.
If they do not like my signs I simply reply
that they should put out their own signs
and take responsibility for their incivility.
She tells me she is really afraid,
for once glad to be old with death on its way.
I remind her of all dangers she has faced.
I smile and encourage her to take her place
among our past heroes who gave voice to renew
the promise of America for me and for you.
I promise her she is stronger than even she knows,
that together we are strong enough to fight any foe.
I remind her everyone fears what the future portends
She nods and she smiles but her eyes tell a different story
She yearns for the time when being white
meant she could claim control and full glory.
I am an old white lady, but have never been sweet.
Being real is neither pretty nor neat.
I handle truth in its complexity,
dirtying my hands and feet
placing signs in my yard,
refusing to give in to hate and racism.
Ugly truth-teller is my only “ism”.
Silence is complicity.
Fear and hate do not deserve pity.
DANCE IN THE RAIN
If not too early, perhaps too late
rain falls through parched skies,
in drizzles and drips only;
clouds’ moist linings absorbed
by dried out cells
of the hydrogen and oxygen
we need to survive.
The train’s whistle blows
in drowned out gasps.
Wet skies hold back
the usual click and clack
of dry wheels over steel track.
Iron wheels now slip and slide,
a smoother if more uneven ride.
Wet nights lead to wet mornings
drowning our the train whistle’s warning
of all that is to arrive
during this election drive.
Tom-toms beat quieter drums
to speed up hearts
and slow down minds
as the train approaches
the nations’s destination.
AI interrupts nature’s offer
to set things straight
without a factual bother,
as facts fall beneath
the slippery wheels,
and we are easily thrown off-track
unsure now what is fiction or fact.
We will all soon be mad as hatters.
Too soon, we wonder if anything matters.
After drought, roots unfold soundlessly
and it is hard to hear the truth’s refrain.
Our senses our dulled by falling rain.
Our restless sleep disrupts our days.
We are lulled by quieter chants,
but nothing has changed.
Courage now, lads and lasses.
The polls await the arriving train.
We must vote, in sunshine or rain.
Open sad and tired eyes.
Listen with too-numbed ears.
The sounds may be different,
but not the refrain.
Time to vote the danger away.
Time to learn to dance in the rain.
Vote!
FUTURE WAITS
Future refuses to talk.
She holds her cards close.
No expression crosses her face.
Her fierce calm holds us in place.
We gamble our fortunes, our lives,
within her unfathomable space.
Withholding breath we wait
to discover our curious fate.
“Play the cards you have,”
she says,“before it is too late.”
The game here now will last until
each card has been played.
Holding onto cards
means new presents are delayed.
The young know this better
than their elders do.
The young play with greater abandon,
unconscious of the heavy stakes
that keep my eyes open all night through,
awake, until light from a new day
through the closed blinds seeps through.
A new day.
A new game.
Time to play.
Future cuts the cards.
No time to waste.
Vote!
Filed under POETRY
FIRE IN THE BLOOD
Cloudy strands of night remain across the morning sky.
Heat wraps ribbons of summer across earth’s face.
Autumn asks simply , “Why?”.
The gift wrapped oxygenated air
is a treasure, earthy yet sublime.
How can we see clearer what is dearer
without a cooler, clearer clime
to unwrap summer’s dulling glaze,
and whip away the haze?
Autumn days unwrap vision a ribbon at a time.
Cooler weather help plants and animals prepare
for wintry days and nights ahead.
Too confused to prepare means death, instead.
Already, heat and drought have killed
the dogwoods and the ferns.
Colors fade as flowers thirst.
Grass browns blade by blade.
Field and forest and neighborhoods
erupt in searing blaze.
Heated winds slap across our face,
challenging humanity to a duel
between green energy and fossil fuel.
Humanity’s death was once foretold;
no longer by the threat of flood,
but by fire, a fire in the blood.
Filed under POETRY
SIGN STEALER
A restless night wondering if the sign is still in place.
The sign I had to replace.
The young white man in the white SUV
loaded the Harris sign in his car’s rear
compartment, deportment of theft.
What cause does he serve?
My neighbor called to report, quite unnerved
as she saw him hurry my sign inside
then jump in the back seat of his ride.
I wondered at first to pause and consider
if the thief is motivated by hate,
or greed for a sign of his own.
Wishful thinking, I know.
Hate burns so fast,
Yet, we respond too slow
to catch the numbers on the license plate
of the vehicle likely stacked
with signs this crew used to show hate.
The sign has been replaced, another “on-order”
just in case the thief returns to take more plunder.
And, as I always have done, still I wonder
what motivates such sinful behavior.
Mild, stealing a campaign sign may be;
but, crossing hate’s boundaries,
moving over mine to steal my sign
shows hate’s design clearly, not merely
a sin old as time, and hard to contain
once such boundaries are crossed.
Such sins raise an alarm,
where and when would this thief
decide to cause even more harm?
Hate, once acted upon, fuels the fire;
and harming another grows in desire.
Words matter, you see.
they motivate young men such as he
to cross over boundaries once firmly in place.
Such is a nation’s disgrace
to act as if this campaign
is simply another political race.
WRITING
“Start writing” the app says.
So easy is it to reveal
The secret places in the heart,
The solemn vaults in the mind,
The wounded spaces in the body?
Think that is not a really big deal?
Hiding from self seems the norm.
For a very good reason
From the day we are born.
First we must grow into one we know
Can protect and defend
The one we hide deep below.
What risk writers take to open wide
A self hidden and safeguarded inside.
Risk is too small a word for the task
Of showing self vulnerable, anxious, naked at last;
seeking connection inside you, with words that will last.
Filed under POETRY
HOW TO CHOOSE A BABYSITTER
Babysitters don’t come cheap.
They are hard to find sometimes.
One wants to be chosen
to guard the those you hold most dear;
to protect them so you need not fear.
Ignore that he is a convict,
convicted on 34 charges,
awaiting sentencing.
Your children will not know, nor mind.
And the criminal charge of rape
was never made.
The statute of limitations had passed.
The new babysitter-to-be did have to pay
the woman the civil jury found he raped.
He had to pay when he lied about her charge
and defamed her for telling us what he did to her.
You do not have any daughters, right?
Your sons may be okay unless
he teaches them his ideas of sex-play.
And do not leave your checkbook or credit card lying about.
He has a need to cheat, defraud and steal, the lout.
But you can lock them in the safe, right?
Of course your children cannot be locked away.
But, you think he is safe, you say?
Then by all means choose this babysitter on voting day.
MORNINGS
Is the first awakening any better than the last?
Or must we always yearn for what is past?
The sun breaks open the darkness we are closed within.
Even in darkness our light is never dimmed.
Must we compete, then with the light we face at dawn?
Must we shine brighter, hotter, higher, hour after hour
until exhaustion overtakes our effort to shine divine?
Finally, darkness comes to embrace us, calm us, take us
where we may dream of what will be, what was, what is.
Is the first awakening any better than the last?
Will the next awakening be even better than those past?
Filed under POETRY
DOLDRUMS
The in-between times
seem wanting but never bore,
filled with dread galore.
Filed under POETRY
