A Winter Morning

A farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.
Against this stillness, only a kettle's whisper,
and against the starry cold, on small blue ring of flame.

Ted Kooser

Kids with Wives

Born only to cry and take.
Parents only too pleased to give,
children adopt skillful giving
to their tool-kit.
How much and when to use
is perfected by trial and error.

With estranged parents
donating and accepting
are mainstays of relationships
as parents seek to smother
with alternate currencies for company

When sexuality matures
and damages or displaces
the neatly organized tools in the box
their existence is devoted to
pleasing someone else before
themselves, or worse, me

The situations allowed to develop in
my sexual relationships
which you would erase
you have to witness, reenacted.
You dare not interfere.
For theirs' is not my world
and I fear rejection as
they feared mine.

The rope slackens
no need to drag them
they gather their own momentum.
After they pass me,
the leash tightens again
as I become the burden.

No more camping, games, rides,
cooking together, no more
rides home or girlfriends
Kids with wives aren't as much fun.

WRM (written before he became a grandparent!)

On a Child Learning to Talk

Methinks 'tis pretty sport to hear a child
Rocking a word in mouth yet undefiled;
The tender racquet rudely plays the sound
Which, weakly bandied, cannot back rebound;
And the soft air the softer roof doth kiss
With a sweet dying and a pretty miss,
Which hears no answer yet from the white rang
Of teeth not risen from their coral bank.
The alphabet is searched for letters soft
To try a word before it can be wrought;
And when it slideth forth, it goes as nice
As when a man doth walk upon ice.

Thomas Bastard 1566 - 1618

November

No

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--
No road--no street--no "t'other side this way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--
No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!
No traveling at all--no locomotion--
No inkling of the way--no notion--
"No go" by land or ocean--No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds--
November!

(Thomas Hood)

Memory

Arrangement of nick knacks on shelves
chosen by you and stored in locations
familiar to you alone

Classified by color, size or time
linked as firmly and randomly
as branches in a tree.

The dist of time paint over everything
when disturbed, shows clearly
what has been touched.

A word, piece of music, face, smell, transports
through time, distance, life and death.
You have no control

(WRM)