We Golfers A Very Odd

We golfers are so very odd!
We pitch and putt and lose our minds
Over a small white ball perched on sod;
We golfers are so very odd!
Often invoke the name of God;
To be  Golfer it takes all kinds.
We golfers are so very odd!
We pitch and put and lose our minds!

At My Age

At my age I think a lot.
Much dreaming in the dark night
When only the barn owl is awake
And children fast asleep
With all their dreams of yesterday,
I ponder about tomorrow's plight.
Not for fear of the deep
Or the ebb and flow of a new daybreak
Touching upon the mountain lake,
But for all the things I've wrought.

Yet for all the wisdom I've been taught
A raging recess gives me fright
A fissure from a shaking quake
Arouses me while fast asleep
Gives me pause to face the day,
Instills doubt of what I seem.
At my age I need to pray
And think of history in my wake,
Remember Adam and the snake
Who never got what he thought.

Noise Abatement

Noise Abatement

Like an incoming tide
the dishwasher is roaring
and just when I think

that it is the only sound
in the building, a woman screams
below me. The condos on

both sides of me suddenly
awaken with music and chatter
men shout at their wives

and girlfriends. The racket
multiplies. The woman next door
is teaching her goldfish to sing .

The parakeets are restless
and peck their beaks raw
against the cold steel cage bars. I too

am fidgety and think
the sound beaming from the television
the limit of my patience.

Were you here, I would not
hear the goldfish sing ,
nor restless, angry birds.

We would dance all night,
your hair sleeping across my chest.
In the morning, I would awaken you

with my warm hands and say,
“I’ll make some coffee”!

A Glass of Wine

A Glass of Wine

Here is a glass of wine from my vines
It tastes of sweet grape and pungent earth
It is the best I've grown, from early times
and it is precious, and better than new rain.
Maybe someone will visit this vineyard one day
to sip and be refreshed, and leave happy,
a traveler in deep depression as I was
before I drank down sweet wine from a glass,
sipped a deep-red hue to keep me sane,
after the blue cloud had disappeared.

March

March

A thirty-five mile an hour wind with no relief
Our days upended...the blow enormous and

indiscreet, shakes loft and limb to rafts of leaves
The onerous gale leaves an ominous dark

with no respite. We nail the shutters
as the weatherman suggests. Neighbors follow suit.

Danger captivates us. Stay indoors.
In the distance, a throbbing, muffled noise

a cyclone, whirling round its eye
seeking a random victim.

Afternoon Heat

Afternoon Heat

Sometimes
when we feel a tinge of heat
fevorishly, an afternooner happens,
we grab an hour of love while lumbering tortoises
crawl over sandhills, seeking respite
from the desert sun.

Birth of a Salmon Smolt

Birth of a Salmon Smolt

It was born in the morning
Groping for life
Its fins wriggling and busy,
Groping too, its smooth scales
A meek, measurable weight
in a new world. Where is she
that birthed this minnow?
Its life has come in solitude,
The lonely must fend for themselves.