eavesdropper

eavesdropper
i have been
on the chords of a weekday night organ
drifting from a church door ajar.
A trombone once called
like a soulful beast
from an upstairs window,
its whine entwined
among the leaves
of a tree arching near.
The little grunt
between the lines
of a recorded song,
the singer not performing,
snags my heart.
The loon and the whale
are calling out -
they steal the lead from the stars;
trickling piano notes
from a long-ago soul
play on so cleanly.

morning light
in gloried abundance
sheds upon October roses
peach and white
and goldance afire
masses of wild pinks
both withered and bold -
the freaky old blooms
nod cheerily to the cheeky new.

seaweed for supper

I've enjoyed many international foods. I like adventures in eating - although I prefer to be with someone who has some familiarity with the terms on a menu that are foreign to me, and familiar with how to order. I like foods from India, but have not memorized the names of the different dishes I've enjoyed. I'm slow with that. Even so, as much as I like Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai foods, at the end of the day at home alone, I tend toward the American standards like mashed potatoes or peanut butter and jelly - or Tex-Mex that I've enjoyed for over thirty years. It's really easy to warm up some canned refried beans and a little cheese in a soft tortilla using a microwave.

The one exception regarding home-alone international foods is seaweed. There are seaweed snacks that consist of dried seaweed pressed thin as a slice of paper. They're fun to eat. There's 'nori' which is chilled seaweed salad, green thin threads lightly pickled.

In the past I've read that seaweed is a food with an extraordinary wide range of nutrients. A lot of creatures in the deep seas, as well as humans, dine on it. But I write about seaweed because it's something I had no experience with most of my life, yet my body welcomes it now like an old friend.

freaky little ghosts 
they're mine!
up and at it again
formed of newspaper, string
and white cotton handkerchiefs
they hang from the windows
and the railing outside
and grow more personable
each passing night
hobnobbing among themselves
floating with a breath of breeze
they yield the pleasure
of a halloween shiver

a square of fabric
cut from the sky
a wren in the window
twitters from the cosmic sill

Swiss Trails

I've visited Switzerland once, and that was in fall 2005. It's great to spend time in another culture. When you experience how other folks live and how they get things done, you see yourself and your own way of life in new light. The Swiss compulsion for precise timing - for example buses arriving the very minute printed on the schedule - was startling as was the compulsion for very clean streets - no scrap of litter survived an hour.

Hikers of all ages could be found everywhere. Acres of land here and there were devoted to farming, a patchwork of fields. I don't recall fences but remember the unpaved trails along the edges and sometimes across the fields. Hikers had the liberty to use those trails to cross the properties owned by others. Where trails crossed, there were simple wooden signs on posts that gave the distance (in kilometers) to the next villages or crossings, as though the town was a national park, open to all, or as though the main means of travel in Switzerland was by foot.

roguish light and shadow

When i was young
the mystery of light and shadow
was complex in its composition,
logical in its behavior.
You shone a light toward a chair
or at a piece of cardboard
the shadow could be found right behind.
But light has grown more playful
as i collect my badges of years -
it bends like an acrobat through the dark
and pools in little secret corners
like a tiny lake seeking the lowest spot
or a sleepy cat
curled for a nap.
the shadow of a dove in flight
creates a roguish path.