Oriental Surprise!

A walk on a rainy day in my overgrown garden

I find a busy street in Japan

Filled with

Bright-colored parasols

Open and raised toward the sky,

Protecting the ladies' high-combed hair,

Powdered perfect skin

Emerald green kimonos

From sun and wind.

Zinnias-

A song of color and shapes. 

Message

In the dry    fence lines,

Tangled in old barbed wire,

Strung between wooden posts,

Cut and set decades ago

By a rancher's roughened hands,

I see the summer's growth 

Drying flower heads, 

Drying brown seeds

In wind and heat

Amongst it all 

A Valentine 

Gray against 

Sallowing 

Green.

Lakeside

Above the lake

I sit to watch the wind play with the water.

My chair a rock, 

A great gray giant rock

A rock that seems to be poised there waiting

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Flat on top, smooth, heavy

Just a shore rock waiting for a giant child 

With his giant father,

To come along on a summer afternoon

To chose it -- this rock

To smooth it on his giant shirttail 

Feel it in his giant hand and 

Whip it through giant fingers 

Out across the lake's surface,

Count it with a grand giant thundering voice 

As it tucks the water and skips

One, two, three, four, five,

Five times! 

Five giant skips! 

Oh!

Oh!

I should move! 

Comfort

The fog is a white shawl

That wraps around trees, 

Fills empty bird nests,

Hides in spaces between 

Strands of barbed wire,

Cuddles fence posts,

Squeezes into mailboxes,

Under farm trucks,

Blankets rolls of waiting hay

In silence and peace.

Simple Joy

Struggling up from the woodland floor

A gentian reaches for a bit of sunshine

Amid the fall shadows.

Did God know I would walk by?

Did He know I would 

Brush aside a tear

Replace it with a smile

To be greeted with such a perfect pink

And so sweet and simple

A reminder of joy?

Web Design

Morning light rest on strands

  Of gossamer

Woven threads of silk

Dew like tear-drops drip down

Silently

Night was long,

Night was damaging

Web designer hides from the sunlight

In the center.

Paperback

Bark curls 

Thin like pages of a 

Sappy paperback

Abandoned on a park bench,

Scorned and flapping in protest;

Fighting with the wind

Page edges turning on themselves

Rain soaked, weather dried, 

 Puckered and twisted in agony

At the rejection

Blue

 Where Ocean Stops 

And 
Sky Starts

I cannot Tell,

But Know they Never Touch,

Yet always Touch 

Sky to Sea,

Sea to Sky,

Blue on Blue,

Of the Same Stuff.

Bright Smile

From the crackled mulch of fallen leaves, 

Brown blanket of sticks and soil,

Springs a twelve-petaled piece of sunshine.

For a simple heart that still believes,

God faithful in spreading joy will,

Send a smile from a flower's face to mine.  

Home Sweet Home

Whose door is this?

Who passes here, in and out, 

Over the wooden threshold?

Through winter's cold, who holes up here?

Who sleeps on a summer day,

In this place of refuge,

Waiting for night to gallivant?

What creature seeks asylum here

Squirreling away stores for hungry days,

Stolen pecans, walnuts, hickory nuts?

Who calls home 

This small hollow in a lofty tree?