A Cluster of Poems on:

Haiku (3)
American Religion
Mowing the Meadow
The Frog Drawer
Hijinks at the Oyster Farm
Anger
Drinking
Zippo Lighters
Agent Scully of the X-Files
Aging
Body & Soul
A Movie Set
Despair 
Springtime
Dylan Thomas
Healing 
Limits
Past Loves
Birds
Where Poetry Comes From
A Past Love Revisited
A New Moon
Satan himself 
An excerpt from a future scripture
Familial Discord
An Anthem for the Mentally Ill
Tactile Physics
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Higgs Boson
Perspective
Good Olde Fashioned Love Poetry
The Romance Rolodex
Wetlands

A Few Haiku

Surprise

I hear but can't see.
Oh, my, there's the humming bird
inches from my heart.

Color

Yellow mustard patch,
as if wind kicked the paint can
on the valley floor.

The Press

With their smooth, bronze flesh
the arms of the Madrona
press its leaves skyward.

The Commons

I miss the Common Church of America.
The one I was born into,
That had the golden rule,
And live and let live at its heart,
And not much else was needed.
 
The primary sacraments?
A firm handshake, the opening of a door,
A friendly word,
And nobless oblige
For those that could afford it.
 
But I was just a child,
And did not see the million jagged
Details that separate one
Litany from the rest
As being so much more important
Than the central truths we all
Surely live and die by.
 
That all the caterwaul and folderol
And fanning of the flames creates
A babylonic masterpiece of
Hell on earth. As if to prepare
For being apart from god,
We practice on ourselves
Like we were being paid to do it.
And by whom?
 
I ask myself who benefits from
Multiplying the divisions
And the answer I get
Raises hackles deep and sharp
On the back of my heart.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 2011

Mowing Window

In between the rains today,
I had to mow the meadow moist
and choked the blades some fourteen times
with grass and clover as thick as cheese.

And when I clawed the terminating turf
free of the discharge port
and carried the double handful,
steaming, to the mulch pile,
the juices ran between my fingers
like hot, green wine.

And now my soggy knees, my curses
and my misery are all beside the point;
that nothing in my universe
smells anywhere as good
as moist, mown meadow.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 2011

Hijinks at the Oyster Farm

The sheriff's log recorded some hijinks at the oyster farm
and I was moved to wonder if they came to any harm
cavorting as they might and with a clash of foot and shell
some passionate debacle and unleashing of all hell.

So ugly on the outside, such sliminess within
its hard to see how, in all this, a pearl can begin
yet bedded deep in salty fold, such budding spheres do lay
Like hidden stars in boxes lining every cove and bay.

In heisenberg's uncertainty the sheriff is our guide
who ranges with his searchlight for hijinks far and wide.
Where jackalopes and yeti and phantaloon abide
We know that in his beam of light, there is nowhere to hide

So sally forth and carry on and be our ears and eyes
and we'll await in mirthful state your tales of drive bys
to touch these worlds of whimsy that defy the light of day.
where animal digressions and behaviors are at play.

The Frog Drawer

The frog drawer in the barn
holds a small green surprise
and every time I open it
I never know if I'll be
leapt upon, leapt over,
stared at or delivered
of an even smaller brown surprise
as I witness the seeming sole survivor
of all that froggy bellowing last Spring.

I can still hear the roar of that,
still feel the hum of it
singing through my ribs.

Fewer Poets

One doesn’t really need a pen nor rhyme to be a poet.  In simply living life
with the heart of a poet, many have bested Whitman and the rest at getting to
and tending their own close garden with such love and care that whatever it is
that poets seek to reveal may be found in such people and such lives.

Take your rage – the anger that cannot be killed – and perform that most
Important of alchemies – changing rage into art, into love, into ideas, into pure
and useful energy…

Rage, or The Dark we Irish call it, is a partner for life.
Dance with it boldly… just don’t let it lead.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

DRAGON FOOD

Drink stopped the terrible, blue, blinding arc of mind,
threshing like a landing light at the gathering swarm of dragons,
but in the drink and the ensuing darkness,
the dragons would eat me alive
and leave my bones whistling through the stratosphere,
gristle flapping, headed for the tarmac.

Over and over I was thus flayed by my own thirst
until someone pointed out that I was addicted to asphalt.

So now I just hang out at the airport
where I can kiss the tarmac whenever I want.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

ZIPPO

Even though I quit smoking I could never give up my Zippo.
This battered old engine, reeking of Father's touch and fossil fuel,
fits in my hand like a cool steel skipping stone.

My thumb flips the lid's familiar clank
and on the downstroke reignites the first victory over darkness
and the first reassuring words of God.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

E-Mail from the XXX Files

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Sheltered by some viaduct, umbrella'd by some tree,
to scan terrain for pheromones of alien display,
our one hundred thousand candle power torches
light the night sky and our trench-coats,
brushing at the elbow, make a sound I can't stop thinking-
like your nylons swishing as you
climb the crime lab library ladder.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Can you set aside your microscope, your specimens and doubt,
sweep away the vacuum flasks,
and let me take you in your labcoat, on the gurney,
while oscilloscopes record the supernatural effects
of red hair, green eyes, and skin the color of
the Mother of all ship's milk.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
And take this G-Man by his cashmere lapels,
as those skeptical, crimson lashes lift, like the dawn sky,
turning up those eyes of yours in which I see all of nature
bowing down in adoration of a green no chlorophyll could emulate and
take this G-Man down through the ferns, because
I know the truth lay somewhere just beyond your valley.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Bring your ether and your scalpel, your rubber gloves and, please,
your handcuffs and your stethoscope, some duct tape and a gun...
I'm tired of all this mystery, let's just have some fun.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Old Enough Now

I’m old enough now to know,
when those little dangly
skin things start to grow,
why some old men just leave em be,
along with all the nose hairs
and unattempted missions,
the wondering who God is
and unrealized ambitions.

I’m now old enough to know.
There comes a time for good enough!
Enough lodging, enough money,
enough love and enough Already.
The world can finally take me as I am;
the dishing out, the caving in,
the giving of a damn.

I was the river, now the ocean.
I am the mountain, mined.
I was the wave, now the motion.
I am the painting, signed.

Lost Grace

Without the mind, what, to God,
would be the sound of our hearts
but a dull hammering.

Without the body,
what residence for the soul
but vast entropy.

Without the breath, what word written,
spoken, or in song, would draw
vibration's bow across fretted heavens.

Without balance, what unlettered warriors
might we become, desperately sifting
the ashes of dancefloors, the memory of flowers,
for the rhythm and fragrance of lost grace.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

TENSION ON THE SET

The Arriflex hums with unfertilized celluloid.
An orange tongue of cloth tape yanks from her eyelid
to take measure of the suitors in her boudoir,
who fret and banter with a swarm of drones
in the song of warrior's wit drawn taught
by the deadline and dripping with
the violent honey of professional antagonism;
All of which is cut by the cadence of
Quiet!... Rolling... Sound... Action...
They are all hers now
and she draws them in to her clockwork bosom,
her mouth of memory and
all the Glory and Infamy of her digestion.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Despair

Sometimes Hope dies.
It just dies.
The most fragile of flowers,
though it can cling to bare rock
and endure the most brutal of elements,
cannot outlast the rock nor withstand forever
the pick and prune of countless birds who flock
to make it food like any other.

Healing Green

The approaching spring heals my blindness
and all around me I can see green detonations
caught in the high speed film of the sun,
their sweet new members murmuring,
"ok... Ok, I'll bide my time until tonight,
when I can drink deep from the air itself
and surely by morning I'll have reached
the lovely chaos of that curly maple over there.
Did you see her move just now?  I swear
she took another step in my direction."

Dylan Thomas Took On Death

Dylan Thomas took on Death,
in a fair fight, from the look of it;
Blood on every page,
and not all of it Dylan's.

Read his work aloud ,
and your own taught chords of sweetness
will sing with his light and his rage,
and his unfailing, fragile love of All of it.

The All if it his pen could only trace
his brief portion of, unrelinquishing
his own sure knowledge
of the undrawn lines that stretch beyond the dying of the light.

Stretching even beyond our own grasp,
to writhe and clutch
at the unbridled joy denied us
by our own hands.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

The War

Some women ache with an ache more encompassing
than men are capable of imagining.
If you know such a woman,
you can gather her up in your arms and,
at first, you can only hear the wracking sobs.
Then, in the stillness of your
masculine illusion of healer,
you begin to notice her tiny world of pain and,
at first, you are afraid and want to run,
but if you stay you cannot breathe, so
you run. But if you stay in that world
and simply hold the only other person in it,
you will also feel the ache and, in time,
you will no longer be the pretense of a healer;
you will become the healed and the ache becomes love.
But few men ever make the journey
and our world fills with the walking wounded.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

The Diminishment of Limits

Most of us deal with the small pink muscles of life,
whether we are pulling or being pulled.
We watch the biceps and strapping torsos of others
and then wince at the ineffectual tendrils
of knucklemeat in our own hands,
around our own hearts.

When will I be real strong, real good, real anything?
"When you stop asking" comes the smart reply
from the roof of my sarcasm.
And my little house of cards is shuffled in the pretense
of good measure, my hands aching to deal in a much bigger game.

The Girls

All my favorite nuns
are escaping from
the convent of my past
where I had safely locked them
under cloister and key.
They’re all dressed to kill
and they’re coming for me
Lucky me
Lucky me
Lucky me

Birds In Flight

Darwin really nailed it, didn't he? Really caught that melody
that matches every lyric in the song of life.
The prime IF-THEN statement buried deep
in the basic program of existence:
Survival is the decision maker-of-us-all,
securing our lineage all the way back
from the Alpha human to the Zygote of the paramecium and
even to the quark itself, hot buzzing little seed from the mother of all bangs
and the only fly in the ointment,
the feather of imbalance on the scales of thought
is found in pondering the question of birds in flight;
those free and joyous angels we envy and emulate
with all our engineering and our alloy dreams come true.

Birds in flight, dumb as posts, forced by evolution
to enjoy their ridiculous ecstasy
and "forced" is the problem word here.
Because the climb of the lichen from the dark sea
to the sun kissed rocks, the development of faculties
and the sprouting of limbs is all in keeping
with the inexorable engine of Darwinian common sense... But birds in flight?
The willful defiance of gravity
to escape the snapping jaws and dissolving, jellied venoms
of rock-born predators might surely prompt the urge to the vertical,
but such a leap of faith becoming flesh and feather
could not happen in the million moments
between the smelling of the prey
and the incisor's finishing penetration of the meat.

Birds in flight,
inflammatory to our imagination
and mechanical beyond the reason of nature;
felons from the cold evolutionary justice of dog eat dog
for the begetting of a superior dog.

Birds in flight,
The killing-fall of the falcon on the field mouse below,
the horizon vaulting return to the precipice of sky,
the glorious aching in the shoulder and talon
as appetite goes ecstatic over the dinner in hand
and no enemy ever devised can do more than envy
and admire its departure from earthly regulation.

Birds in flight,
should have no right to get away with such murderous mockery,
yet be blessed with such plumage and grace,
we can only sigh and agree without argument
they are beauty itself, symbol of all we strive to be:
a loved and fragile anomaly with a body modeled on spirit
and, in all the heavens, something truly special,
an unreasonable surprise: Birds in flight.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Where Poems Come From

There are no poets on Poetry Island
Just the dead and the tortured
the unborn and all the refugees from chaos
who gather together to dance and sing
and pour their jokes in pissing jars
and toss them in the sea.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

A Face Fresh From The Past Poem

The evergreen point floating bridge in the dark.
Seagulls lay stacked and frozen in the wind
Like stone cherubs while the moon stares
A gauzy white from this charcoal black October night.

My tires rumple the seams of the bridge
And with each succeeding thump;
The rhythm of my memory
Jumps back a notch or two in time.

And her face unfurls in the city lit clouds
And her black hair crashes through my windshield
And her fierce eyes prowl my rearview mirror
Like the headlights of a reckless driver.

Another thump; and she's curled up and giggling.
A toasty, nestled softball in the glove of my body.
She was the missing little sister of my soul.
"spoons" she would exclaim and that is how we'd sleep.

Thump again; and I am saying goodbye to her madness
And all the other devils on her dancecard
That I claimed I never bargained for,
And stood upon so righteously and firmly closed the door.

Thump once again; and I am philosophical now.
A hypothesis evolves in this lane;
Of a species of people whose vices and appetite,
Require more of one than intimacy can satiate.

As my car rolls up the eastern incline,
The city lights ascend the rise
And the last thump jars me out of reverie;
The dark passenger of an empty heart.

A New Moon

The silvered thumbnail of an African Goddess
pokes down through the sky and draws taut
the enveloping tent of dusk, a fabric she savours,
and it's sheer lambent azure carresses her skin.
She inhales and her luxuriating stretch pulls
the darkening canvas so hard that tiny holes appear;
the sweat of her passion we call stars.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

DOMINION

As you go through life,
place your trust only in God.
Be kind to the people you meet along the way,
even the ones you don't like...
and allow the Lord to whittle away
at the Lumber in your own eye.
... A pretty tall order, don't you think?
... Kind of "Mother Theresa" and the Kitchen SINK?
Doesn't Scripture say to love God... Trust Authority and Judge The Wicked?
We all know who they are and, Believe You Me, it's a lot more fun.
Better yet, believe IN me.
Some of you won't... That's fine.
Some of you do... I'm your favorite excuse.
Some of you Worship me... Well, I LUV you, too.
Some of you hate me... What a Delicious Distraction.
None of you would recognize me.
Allow me to introduce myself:
...My Name is Dominion
I am a man of.. Stealth and Waste.
My Power is in the Charismatic Charm of Surrendered Control.
My Knowledge is Scriptural - Chapter and Verse.
My Strength is your Pretention to Wisdom.
My Refuge is in your Vanity.
My Greatest Weapon is Your Darkest Fear.
My Advantage is your lack of esteem and your Insatiable Hunger
for cheap thrills, easy answers, and the Quick, Final Solution.
And my Army? A Legion of well-intentioned, Hat-Check Girls and Boys,
who grab at your Haberdashery with Small Magic, Dumbshows, and noise.
I am the Original Lifetime Satisfaction Warranty...
I am the Pious, Wealthy Parson of Manipulative Poise.
I am the Star-Enamored Visionary, Channelling your Money and
The arm accross your throat, as I plunder all your Honey.
I am Just a simple Jackboot Cobbler, threading the needles of Discontent.
I am the invulnerable government maggot, whining and raising the National Rent.
I am the Dealer of Dangerous Drugs, Damn Few of which are Chemical.
I am the Bureaucratic, Data-Crunching, "Got-Your-Number" Numbskull
who claims to have the answer, based on grounds completely Logical.
I am the Poet, here before you, trashing all your mentors...
We ARE the endless gauntlet of carpetbagging emperors,
Undulating Naked in Celebrity's Clothes,
Who Profit from the Secret every Child Molester knows:
To acquire Dominion,
Simply Pick a Spot
Between the victim and the Light...
They'll do anything you say, without a Fight.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

COVENANCY 3129

From the Third Testament, in the Book of Rapture,
in the 2nd verse of the 14th chapter,
Gloria Pabon of Buenos Aires
harmonizes with Swing Tanaka's
plaintive haiku in Book One:
....."One More Time Again,
.....The Harvest Blade Sweeps Moist Hay
.....And Gold Whets The Scythe."
....."The Setting Sun Kneels
.....In The Stale Breath Of Cities,
.....Stars Quaver In Song..."
....."Reaching Down To Us,
.....Starlight Lifts The Teared Eye;
.....It's Time To Come Home."

"It Can't Be As Simple As All That!", claims
the reasonable mind.

"Simpler Than A Warm Hand.", says Tanaka.
"Softer Than Bosom, Sweeter Than Milk."
"The Hand Of Love, every bit as powerful
as the Sovereignty of God so deftly expressed
in the Great Threshing,
when all the world's temples, tracts, and artifacts
Disappeared without a trace on a quiet Summer's Eve.
As it is written:
....."Faith Was Once Again
.....Rooted To It's Foundations
.....By A Hand So Strong
.....That Earthly Tyrants
.....Relieved Themselves Bodily,
.....Donning Servitude.
.....'Love Is Lord' proclaimed
.....so loud our vision shifted
.....to the infrared."
For the WORD as Heard before shall now be Seen as well:
That we may become the seekers of Light and Heart
we were created to become...
Not To Wander in the desert, but to Wonder
as the heavens push on our riding boots
and open the gate to all of it's chambers.
The House of Mansions foretold in John 14
of the Second Covenant:
"You KNOW The Way to the Place where I am Going."

He Said to follow him through the eye of the needle
and the Mystery, Hidden for Ages and Generations,
is How Many Times the Tailor is Willing
to Re-Cut the Thread to assure safe passage
for every fiber in this coat of many colors called mankind.
To be reconciled with all things, whether they be
on Earth or In Heaven.

Let us make the journey single file if need be.
There is no sense in rushing
if the journey is not over until the very least of us
has crossed the threshold.
As it is written:
"The Last Shall Be First."

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

The Family at Point Blank

I saw my whole family miss the point;
that when a group of people are that close,
their deep and certain knowledge of each other,
which in joyful times makes happiness seem a birthright,
could turn like a clairvoyant serial killer
and flay the whole lot of them to the bone.

All quick minds and ready opinions. All carrying the flag of concern
All standing on the first amendment and the desire to get at the truth
and All ankle deep in a rising torrent of blood.
I watch my family miss the point of intimacy
and turn the clan defending weapons inward.
There is nowhere to run.

The Father’s silence appears to heal nothing.
The Mother insists on her right to give advice.
The Sons, now grown, return the favor and she is outraged at their insolence.
The daughters-in law huddle in the shadow of the siege equipment,
as the fortification timbers fall, just missing the children.
They all want to get to the Truth of the matter,
and with each succeeding volley, another jagged hole is blown
in the fortress that once grandly protected them all.

The point is that the path to intimacy
arms us too well for the return voyage.
To really hurt someone, you’ve got to know them well.
We family members know each other too well to inflict
anything less than mortal wounds,
with even the slightest judgment,
the most caring of opinions.
Inside the walls of family, the most harmless gossip
can precipitate a hemorrhage the strongest heart could not staunch.

With each swing of the axe, they cry out for the truth,
slicing off the only ears that would ever care to listen.
The World certainly doesn’t care and that’s the point.
When a family declares war on itself,
unqualified surrender holds the only hope of victory.
The joy now fading into memory was not a birthright,
but a precious gift. A very fragile peace now swallowed up
in the mouth of pride and the simple point of clan and family
is drowning in the blood of good intentions.
As the carrion of ill will circle the battlements,
I pray for peace in the shy wisdom of my father’s silence.

-The Eldest Son.

THE QUEEN OF WATERBURY

On ward 1-A of Waterbury State Hospital,
2 hallways intersect where Hester spends her years.
She is a human fossil from the days of asylum,
when women were the mad meat of choice
for the guards and their boozed-up pals.
Hester now guards that intersection with catatonic grace,
her hands crossed at her waist,
her old tendons continuing the life's work
of much older manacles.
In the years since her rescue from the pit,
she has lost her concentration only twice,
distracted by aides who got too close
and turned their backs, she has jumped
and snapped their necks like match sticks
and all it takes to calm her down
is to cross her wrists and let her magic handcuffs
do their simple task: to invite the ghastly,
vagrant legion of tormentors,
who savaged every inch of her, to come again,
with the hiss and whip of their sweat,
their indefinable agonies and what Hester concluded
was her portion of love.
Hail Hester, Queen of ward 1-A.
Her royal subjects now fill our streets and jails.
They cushion the bottle-splintered alleys with their flesh
and wear the encephalogram of knighthood
in the Royal Order of Adjusted Expectations.
We, the unsubjected, salute you all,
and your tireless efforts to understand our message of indifference.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A,
who teaches her minions the power of the human heart
to make a silk purse full of love
from the sow's deaf ear of managerial evil.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A.
May the pale majesty of your probing hands
stroke, with gentle justice, the carotid comfort
and stiff necked mercies of our complacency.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A,
whose subject's hunger wails unrequited
in the cackle and fugue of sidewalk slobbertalk,
and whose hour of peace will surely come
when the polite chit chat of the lifted
dainties in the tea room of civilization
becomes perturbed at the annoying din
of snapping match sticks...
and god help the drooling fools
who have not mastered Hester's poise,
her vigil of silence, a manifesto
for the weak; an urgent warning:
that the wages of wailing will be a polite death
and a well managed ending to a life lived
in abject failure to appreciate cold rejection
and brutal torture for the generous
and benevolent opportunities they really are.
Hail Hester, the Queen of Coy, who speaks from her gut.
A fun loving gal who can keep her mouth shut.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Reflecting Upon Modern Physics

Upon reflection,
I do not appear to be one of the brightly colored bricks of humanity
that float and jostle for space and place about me.
As they inhale and expand,
I am impelled like a hushed and Gleaming Paste of light,
up and down, in and out of their cubic dimensions,
Cartesian and Galactic.
As they exhale, I expand and slow down
to the millimetric crawl of a glacier
and roll, a paste of sensation,
into each and every gritty abrasion.
As I approach infinite slowness,
The dust of their planation cakes to my skin
Their wounds and fissures expand to infinite size
and the observer and the rest is quantumly caressed
in this embrace of Time and Space,
where I am the mason of Touch and Place.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Perspective

To the South, I can just make out the star's cold crystal web bracing the unfamiliar night.

To the West, they grind tragically into the tree line and my thoughts chase them with a thousand questions relativity aches to answer.

An Olde Fashioned Love Poem

you are the one.
you amaze me the way fire tickles a field of straw.
you are more sweet than seeds in flight against the wind
and stronger than laviathan beneath ageless fathoms.

you are the only one.
you startle my dreams with laughter against being alone.
you are more deft of hand than man's most intricate machine
and warm enough to blush a face of stone.

you are the first.
you anger me like the moon teasing the ocean.
you are more graceful than the shadow of clouds on the valley floor
and brazen enough to tempt the devil, only to show him the door!

you are the last.
you answer the riddles of the darkness and the rod,
for you are more gentle than their opposites
and soothing enough to heal even the ravages of god.

you are the reason.
you teach me like a breeze informs the wing.
you are more of everything created and imagined of beauty
than the word itself could hold, so i will hold you.
because that is who i am.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

The Romance Rolodex

There simply isn't time to say
Skin softer than free fall from 10,000 feet
There's not enough time in the day
Laughter galvanizing a face so pure
There's no time left to get the job done
Hair like tactile perfume - eyes only, hands on a dare
There's no time at all
A voice so disarming, the gravest worry seems a blessing
Life is too short
Eyes so dark, wet, and dreamy, the world goes away
Time is a river
Hands so dry and sweet, the envy of wine
The white water never stands still
Long enough to reflect your beauty
You are the river of all my days
But i can only dive in between the ticking and the tock
I demand to see the owner, I want a different clock.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 1997

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Higgs Boson

Higgs Boson for Dummies, a guy on radio said.
“I qualify to attend!” I yelled and leapt up out of bed
The speaker spoke a million words at such a furious pace
I heard them travel round the world then back into his face.
 
The pattern of his spittle made designs upon the air
And I deciphered anagrams of participle where
There should have been a Schrödinger inside of all that fur
But fuzzy was his concept and the jury was a blur.
 
That boson is a helper heaping mass upon the deep
Wherever there is nothingness the Higgs is sure to sleep
But nothingness is everything and so I have digressed
That boson sitting on my head is making me depressed.
 
Imparting mass is what it does and does it with a twist.
It does it with a godlessness that has religion miffed.
Where baryonic matter goes, the Higgs is sure to dance
And slip a little mass into the pocket of your pants.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 2014 After great presentation given at the Friday Harbor Labs

The Lunds

The wetlands near us are fat this year.
The rains have had their say and then some
and the laughing duck parties go all night.
I don't how the swans get any sleep.

Last night, austere Orion slid like the ace of diamonds across the sky
while his lowly wrinkled brother, a looser jointed fellow,
did a slow soft shoe among the reeds and mallards
anchoring the little moon faced lake that will be gone by Summer.

The Lunds we call them, our fronded winter friend,
a benign flood that arrives in the Fall with the cackling ducks
and doesn't leave till the massive frog party in Spring
when you can feel the roar of a million amphibians
doing what life does best and so fervently.

Copyright © Paul S. Walsh 2013

All poems at this site are copyright  © Paul S. Walsh
Reprints or re-use by permission only.

This page made in Honor of my Amiga 1000. The Engine of Engines.

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