Sophia at Halloween
Tag Archives: Nature
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE
The coyote doesn’t howl at the moon
he howls to the other coyotes
to remind them to look up
WINDMILL FARMS
WINDMILL FARMS
How many will it take to keep this thing in the air
BALL LIGHTNING
BALL LIGHTNING
In the front door out the back
A ball of lightning through the barn
in the story dad would tell
I wonder now if the light was white
and if it made a sizzling sound
as some who’ve seen one have described
All happened in a blink I guess, and gone,
like this, and all the questions that I didn’t ask
QUANTUM LUNCH
QUANTUM LUNCH
There is nothing stable in this table
And yet
the ever so quickly spinning
nothingness
that is me
is happy this particle-wave
filled morning
to rest on it with non-existent elbows
and gaze and gaze
at the improbable you
THE FARM, THE RANCH AND THE NEED FOR GOD
THE FARM, THE RANCH
AND THE NEED FOR GOD
Who pray to when the rains don’t come
who forget to thank when they do
Who curse when the John Deere breaks
and the cow jumps over the moon
(by the moon of course I mean
the fence to the alfalfa field)
Who in the long nights pondering
under stars too cold to be suns
a word big enough for big
THE USELESS LAKE
THE USELESS LAKE
At the edge of our ranch
lay a large and useless lake
True, it was pretty enough
when the sun struck it just right
And the alkali
didn’t seem to be a problem
for the seeming millions
of cormorants, gulls and pelicans
who embraced it for their home
There were even men
living along the south shore
who may have been happy
mining its salt for money
What I meant was
it was water
that the cows couldn’t drink
BOB MUD IN AUSTIN
BOB MUD IN AUSTIN
(World’s longest mud painting on newsprint)
Bob paints in mud
Brush tickles the earth
She needed a laugh
ON THE OTHER HAND
ON THE OTHER HAND
In Haifa
we visited a home
with original paintings by Chagall
(You know how he can always
make you feel like you can fly)
and a bomb shelter
under the stairs
Stopped at a wall by a bus stop
with one stone for each child
killed in the explosion
And looked down on the harbor
across the order the beauty
of the gardens of the Bahai
Looked out across the water
to Lebanon where the last
rockets flew
JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK
JEANNE MARIE WRITES A NEW BOOK
When it rains in Biggar Saskatchewan
a bigger battle begins
Grass and grain sucking straws
to the slurping point
The sun trying as always to extract
far more than its fair tithe
Muddy waters swirling down drains
of gopher and badger holes
Settling through hollows of buffalo wallows
where the buffalo no longer roam
Remainders feeding underground streams
and deep raging rivers
If I put my feet or my ear to the ground
I can almost understand her last poem
Almost hear the next one