I’ve got a quiverful of children.
The Bible calls them arrows
and me lucky
and I am.
Though I’ve a pretty good view
of the target, and pull the bow
the same way every time,
bends in the air
send the one a-high
and the one a-low
and dams back in
their beaver,
aquiver.
I duck myself when they circle around.
I practice.
I do practice.
But my son and my daughter
fly where they will.
Over and under but especially
under the hill,
they fly where they will.
I wouldn’t hurt a fly, but did
en route to clearing the air of flies.
And what’s a bug, who’s not
a bug? I made captain
killing little things, even though
there wasn’t that rank
in my profession.
As night falls pregnant women
exercise in the park and parents
clean the classrooms of the school
(with buckets and rags, I remember
how that was). It’s all green now,
every tree is filled with multiple
shades of dark green, the delicate
dusty pale pink has left us.
I wonder how soon I will see
the change again – the yet darker and fuller
giving way to the first gold.
Sooner than I think tonight, surely.
But happily, this easy arc of color
has no true downside.
I see people smoking in a square.
Someone’s marked it off for them
with tape.
It’s where smoking people go –
one foot in, one foot out,
smoking at the edge.
But the smoke doesn’t stay.
A six-foot cloud has stolen my sun.
Such a cloud shouldn’t last too long,
but miraculously does, being
a string of clouds
lined up with the wind.
Who’d stretch a cloud a mile
to wreck up all my sky?
Raptor
pure receptor
embarassed to pick up
every signal sent on this train,
every feeling felt,
the doubtful wavering
of the woman wondering
if her hair is right,
the dull plodding of the multitude
swiping, swiping,
the man sugaring on ahead
to his visit with the family,
and yes, the girl in red,
her mother worried.
She doesn’t want her to worry.
The ocean is
massive, asleep
at the edge,
but tilt it
and you’ll know,
tilt it and you’ll know
I knew what a vise was
but not the word for it in Dutch.
Still, I figured I’d find whatever it was
“on the work bench
on the third floor,
just under the roof.”
I knew I was looking for
something with a screw.
Piet wanted it to fix a clock.
Not a big clock,
a little clock.
A travel alarm,
like what my Grandma would’ve had
in the ’80’s.
It was a gift from an aunt
and the winder was off.
But first I had to find that screw.
Hail knocks down the blossoms,
but have you seen those stones in the sun?
Flowers take the purse on points.
