National Poetry Month Offering #4

 I Belong

The farmhouse smelled

Of lingering must and cobwebs.

Fine red clay dust lay undisturbed,

Left by the whims of wind,

Gathered by gravity.

Someone had swept,

But not recently.

Debris deposited haphazardly in the corner.

A trove of trash or treasure

Begging to be perused.

Bits of refuse, burned out matches.

An empty sardine tin,

A hardware store calendar from 1969.

Powdery coffee grounds

And eggshells

Wrapped neatly in the local yellowed newspaper.

What’s this? I thought as I pulled at

A protruding corner of black cardboard.

To my surprise, a photograph in browntone!

Four young women,

The one on the left looked back at me

With eyes like mine.

Reassuring me

In the summer of my fourteenth year,

Yes, I am your grandmother.

Yes, you belong.

Growing up I had almost no contact with my father's side of the family but we often lived near members of my mother's family. I felt like an odd duck since my siblings favored the maternal side. It was on the trip south to Mississippi when my paternal grandfather died that I found a photo of his wife, my grandmother, with her sisters. It was a revelation to see her, I was named for her and now I had found that I resembled her. 

National Poetry Month Offering #3

Pheromones

You affect me pheromonally,

Visually, sensually and tonally.

My rapture is barely contained,

The reaction is purely right-brained.

Resistance is futile, you'll learn,

It's more fun to indulge than to yearn.

Ogden Nash was in my head when I wrote this, hence the short form and distinctive rhyme scheme. I was also under the influence of a man whose pheromones deeply affected me. If you haven't experienced this primitive phenomenon, you really should. It's the best drug ever.

 

National Poetry Month Offering #2

Thank You, Mr. Heisenberg

Gray hair close cropped,

The other in a straw hat.

Eating ice cream, sitting on a bench,

Holding hands.

Difficult to ascertain which is Mr, which is Mrs

At this distance.

Dressed as twins

In khaki trousers

And bright print oversize shirts

White socks and blue-white tennis shoes.

Only when they stroll away

Am I safe to assume the shorter is the Mrs.

Once again in similar bodies,

Full circle from infant to elder.

Were I not here to observe them,

Mr. Heisenberg,

Would they behave the same?

I love science and mathematics, even though much of it is incomprehensible to my tiny brain. I found that my grasp of many math and physics concepts made more sense when I applied them to human relationships. 

 

National Poetry Month Offering #1

At the Cafe Bitter

All the tables seat just one
Your bile and anger don't require a chair
Feel free to wallow
As long as you care
The wait staff so inattentive
Inclined to treat you
With sarcastic contempt
Tip them passive aggressively
At three or four percent
There are no appetizers
No foreplay for this repast
Go directly to your entree
Served with buttered
Shards of glass
Wash it down with primo vino
Pressed just for you
From sour grapes
If you long for something slightly sweet
End your meal with just desserts

I wrote this poem in 2009 after a friend told me about breaking up with the man she had been dating for a few months. Upon hearing that he had been dumped, he sent her a package containing a few of her things that she had left at his house, including a stick of butter that melted all over the other items in the box. I guess revenge is a dish best served with butter.

Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits (Peep!)

I hear that there are people who actually eat Peeps. These are not edible. But in my opinion, neither are the ones made of sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, food coloring (often yellow #5), potassium sorbate, natural flavors (!), and carnauba wax. 

This

 

RabbitsRabbitsRabbits

 Ruffly-collared Rabbits