toasted Gregg’s Peach Bread
fresh from the orchard nearby
slathered with butter
Gregg’s Peach Bread
Mosaic
Ollie is upside-down
in the olive chair
chasing rabbits in
his sleep in the quiet
morning whirr of
the fan, coffee
steam rising from
my cup, Boo Radley
curled around my neck
like a fur-fringed coat
on the back of my chair,
Fitz hiding out under
the bed again
while I consider all
the fine porcelain
plates, these
place settings of past
destined to become
somebody’s mosaic
art piece of the
future
Going Bananas
when the world
takes on its murky
hue and the heaviness
of the anchor spirals
downward making it
hard to keep my head
above water I wonder
about my age
and whether I’ve
depleted all the
happy chemicals
or whether I
just need to
eat a banana
Night Bloom
two summers ago
I bought a
night-blooming
Cereus for
ten dollars
thinking of
Dennis the Menace
getting in the way
of that plant that
blooms every 100
years and wondering
whether I’d be up
late enough to ever
see it bloom or
whether some
distraction would
forever keep me
from seeing it
but this very week
as a friend lost her
husband, this flower
bloomed in the dead
of night
like a smile from
Heaven
Crisis in the Manhole
rarely do I ever
get to see true
hold my beer
moments as I
did last week
we’d just finished
dinner when a
dad waiting for
a table took his
baby on a shoulder
ride through the
parking lot,
stopping over the
grate to pretend
to dump the kid
in the hole
he didn’t dump the
kid, he lost his
air pods ~ the case
fell from his pocket,
one pod from his ear
he took the baby back
to the mama and
returned with a buddy
who set down his
beer and went
in the hole for
the retrieval
the old lady in me
was nervous so
I stood in the road
to warn oncoming
cars that there was
a crisis in the manhole
and just like that
the pods were back
in his ears and their
table was ready
Pet Rock
after she died
this all
become a
pet rock
relationship
a biding
of time
a hermit
in his paper
kennel
speaking
only of
those who
bid their dogs
farewell
The Edge of Grief
approaching the
edge of grief
alongside a friend
and the blur of the
numbing steals all
sense of time
and place and memory
of sequence of order
of hunger and thirst
of exhaustion in the
energy of fumes
we’d just returned
from lunch Tuesday
when her call came.
I’d missed it, called her
back to learn her
husband had fallen
from his chair at
work and she was
hospital bound.
I let our boss know.
A friend and I
arrived to a
room full of people
we did not know.
And just like that,
a lunch special
slice of pizza and
salad with lemon
water later, the
world is changed
forevermore
just hours
before she
broke down
in the waiting
room with the
declaration
we weren’t finished.
A Flickering
at 4:37 I heard
scrambling of paw
on wood floor
ticky-toe hurried
steps toward
the bedroom door
next the whining,
different from normal
pleas, like someone
stepping full weight
on my Boo Radley
then a return to
the bed, where he
turned in circles
bumping us with
his body to wake
us up, then lay
between our heads
trembling
panting
as if there were
a ghost.
I took them out,
all three,
in the light balmy
mist of the
pitch black
Georgia backwoods
starry skies
thought of the bits
of squirrel tail
over near the tree
line where violent
death hung in the
recent air
we came back
inside, and I turned
off the light to return
to bed.
A flicker after the
switch-off, and I
knew.
Hello, Mom!
Reality
every few days
I have the urge
to sell everything
we own and move
into the camper with
two plates, two forks,
and two spoons
and share a knife~
to retire, take to
the highways, see
the changing landscape
of America, pulling
our flatware and
plates from
site to site
no particular place to be
no pressing deadline to meet
then I come to my senses
trying to reckon with the
reality of the silverware
drawer and all those
cabinets.
Horror Farm
out by the tree line
of Loblolly pines
fifty feet from our
front door
where the Great
Horned Owl pair
chats across the
pine branches
at 5 a.m.
Ollie and Fitz
stopped in their tracks
to smell the rotting leaves.
They looked like charcoal,
only fuzzy. More like a
squirrel tail torn to shreds.
Or a rabbit.
I had just told my children
about rabbit, rabbit earlier
on the first day of June.
Was this a harbinger of
death for this poor
creature gone except
for its fur?
This farm holds mysteries
that will never yield answers.
It’s been the Johnson
Funny Farm since 1971
when three farmhands
saw a trio of cross-eyed pigs
but it’s not all funny here.
Sometimes there is
a twinge of horror against
all the laughter and tears.
Common Threads 