All life is organic

Picture credit - Michael Wells

Things have greened up around here. Rain and a significant number of warmer days have provided the necessary ingredients for summer to envelope us and all we do. The grass has been cut already multiple times.

Poets are supposed to notice things. Have a keen sense of awareness. A part of me thinks the pandemic has stifled this a bit. Not getting out and about as much and when I did, it was pretty routine.

Just this week I have been more observant. A couple of days ago we had some of the biggest clouds in the sky. Towering overhead cumulonimbus in stark contrast - dark ones and some permeated by the sun as it was trying its best to have a say in the sky.

And birds…. wrens, sparrows, and house finches all seen within the past few days. I feel that birds are a source of joy. From song to their little feet as they hop about. Then there is what they do the best, fly—

There are many other critters around, I’ve seen squirrels, rabbits, and a skunk alongside the road. But birds are interesting to me because they tend to not mind humans that much. They seem a little cooler about coexisting with humans. In the morning they will hop around on the driveway with little concern that I’m there too. No squirrel is going to do that.

I don’t know exactly that summer is my favorite month, but I am enjoying it right here and now. Maybe the pandemic has made me appreciate it more as I move about a little more freely (though still with prudence and caution).

Books—

I am awaiting the arrival of a new poetry collection by Susan Rich - Gallary of Post Cards and Maps.

I have recently finished reading Music for the Dead and Resurrected: Poems by Valzhyna Mort.

I met Mort several years ago in a reading at Rockhurst University. Her work, especially this book is a bit on the dark side. She is from I believe Belarus originally.

This book morns those erased by violence. It pays homage to the disaster at Chornobyl and Soviet labor camps in the past.

One of My Past poems—

Obsession

You’ve become a transparency
overlapping everything in my mind.
I see you in every crowd. You inhabit
my dreams and can be seen permeating
every picture— wedged somewhere
behind or to the side of the subject
photobombing your way into my life.
Last night from the other room
I heard your name called out
in a commercial on TV;
Obsession— Obsession--
Of course, my interest was piqued
by this Calvin Kline whose name
was mentioned. Who is this man
and what has he to do with
my Obsession?

First appeared in Ordinary Madness Volume 1

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