He left and we never saw the departure coming. We knew he would leave sooner or later, but not now. We had planned on his visit. We knew he meant he was coming. We knew he might just show up. He traveled on snap decisions. It might be here, it might be Paris or Italy. But there was always the long slow coffee hour with tales of his life as we listened intently. Now he is gone, and as we drink our coffee we tell tales of him and mourn his death.
The birds in the wetland
speak to me in my dreams,
telling tales of what this place
was before we arrived
and forever changed it.
They don’t curse us, although
they remind us we are cursed
by our own actions, but
they do pity us, ground bound
living in our own waste.
In the morning the birds
have disappeared, a few
vultures carrying off the bodies
left by the bobcats whose
territory we have made our own.
At night I say a prayer
for the departed birds, and in
my dreams they come again,
and reject my prayer as hollow
and seeking only absolution.
A length of thread
colorful to be sure
alone, easily
ignored, swept
aside.
Woven
into a tapestry
part of a picture
treasured
for beauty, or
depicting horror
but remembered.
Countless threads
colorful
alone
together
telling tales
locked
in memory.
First Published in New Feathers Anthology Spring 2021
http://www.newfeathersanthology.com/new-feathers21.htm
No one thinks it all that strange
that novels featuring James Bond
appeared well after Ian Fleming
again made acquaintance with the soil.
Nor are we shocked that Conan Doyle
has seemingly taken up pen again
and brought Holmes back to life,
although many find those efforts regrettable.
And yet when I take pen to paper
and cast line upon line of verse
upon the page, weaving intricate rhymes
and couplets of fine iambic pentameter,
I am called a fool or a charlatan for claiming
my work is merely a continuation of
Milton, Eliot and old William Butler Yeats
but homage is a tough game and I’m up to it,
and I toil away wondering just who
will strive to continue my tales when,
as draws ever closer to my chagrin,
I join the masters as further food for worms.
“You know,” she said with a smile,
“that you are going straight
to the infernal regions when this
is over and done with, no doubt.”
“I can’t imagine,” he replied, “that
He who is all knowing and all powerful
would ever let that happen to me.”
“Be serious,” she added, “you know that
the nether world is replete
with scriveners of doggerel, it is
their natural home when they are done here.”
“But I’m a mere bard, a weaver of tales,”
he cried, “nothing more, nothing less.”
“Ah, yes,” she smirked, “but the road
to everlasting fire is paved
with cliches and euphemisms.”
For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com
an old writer and his words 