Forty

I rode my bike for miles under the canopy of trees

that gave me shelter from the persistent summer sun

and the brief summer storm. Leaves fell like manna: 

silently, intermittently, and in premeditated fashion.

Dear God: I never complained nor despaired before

you sent blessings.  Only after the last leaf-loaf will

I wail lamentations through the withered wilderness.

Honey Nut Cheerios

She was a pastor's daughter and one of my first crushes.

I used to visit her every summer 

at my aunt's Christian camp in upstate NY

back when family and females held the same value.

Her younger brother and I would sleep in bunk beds

by night but she and I fed each other a year's worth of 

Honey Nut Cheerios on the same beds by day:

finger food...food for the burgeoning soul.

I don't remember when I stopped making the annual

trip - perhaps it was when family, like a toy at the 

bottom of a cereal box, became less substantial and

females thereby followed suit.

Nowadays, I prefer to keep things less nutty and

perhaps a little less sweet.  I dump my cheerios into a 

bowl: the milk dilutes and makes an echO as lOnely

as a wOlf hOwling at the desert mOOn.

Summer's Momentum

Cicadas
singing tree to tree

Scent
of mulch rising with humidity

Children
on squeaky swings

back forth
  back forth
    slowing
       slowing

summer's momentum

Crossword Puzzle

I saw an elderly couple
working on a crossword puzzle
and for a second I envied and wondered

How nice it must be to
connect words with ease at the end of life
The ones we struggle with day in and day out

The complexities in the white noise

Turn the television and the radio off

Tear down the world wide web of deceit

Shut the fuck up, reconnect and just love.

It's said that we mellow
as we age but this little light of mine
is a steady conflagration engulfing every section

ArtsBusinessEntertainmentPolitics
ScienceSportsTechnologyTravelObituaries

My paper is burning
Corners hissing and turning

Blame it on The Times
and read T
               H
               End in the ferment

Cauldron

At night

I lie in my dark bowl

Comes the blue flame

My rare heart boils inside

Soul screams and climbs

to the rim but doesn't jump

Insatiable incantation 

Pain with prescription