L'Chayim: To Life

The small stream dances, winding through
And in and out between the rocks,
Catching sparkles from the sun,
Playing harmony to songs
Of bugs and birds along its banks -

It carries cold of melted snow
To nurseries of fish and frog.
It moves leaves and reeds along its banks.
It waters bushes, quenches thirsts
Of land-born life.

It meaders for a bit, and curves,
And then lays quietly in ponds
Before it leaps and dances out,
Cavoting around rocks and stumps
Continuing its journey to the sea.

Above the stream disaster crawls
Metal yellow dinosaurs
Rip up the soil, tear down the hills -
Each day they roar across the fields
Destroying what was always there.

Rock strewn meadows, oaks and grass
Will be replaced by velvet lawns
Fed food that's made by Dow, not deer,
Which washed into the brook will choke and
Kill the life that flowed below -
Until
The water slows
The laughter
Stops.

Villanelle

WRITER'S BLOCK

Today I’m suffering from writer’s block
My head is empty, no thoughts to think –
I only sit and listen to the clock.


Could it be I’ve run amuck?

Sanity teetering on the brink?

Today I’m suffering from writer’s block.

My head is heavy, filled with rock –

My eyes are staring – Can’t even blink

I only sit and listen to the clock.

I am confused. I’m in a fog.
Cleverness gone – I’m on the blink!
Today I’m suffering from writer’s block.

 One deep breath, then I’ll take stock -
I know I must have thoughts to think –
I only sit and listen to the clock.


Where’s the key for my brain’s lock?
Where’s the fuel to help me think?
Today I’m suffering from writer’s block.
I only sit and listen to the clock.

Villanelle is a poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the 1800s from the imitation of French models. The word derives from the Italian villanella from Latin villanus (rustic). A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.

Deer

Three doe are standing in our yard

They’ve eaten up the roses – that was last spring

One is just now stretching up To eat some privet leaves.

She balances for just a bit on her hind legs,

To reach the berries well above her head.

Another licks and grooms the smaller doe

Perhaps her daughter – spotted fawn of just a year ago.

She licks her face, cleans out her ears -

Suddenly she turns,

Ears shaped like stalks extend

And point at me.

I think the deer hear sounds we’ve never heard -

Miles away or just beneath the ground -

I wonder what our yard sounds like to them.

The doe who ate the leaves is tired now,

She folds herself down upon the grass.

Head high, ears up, she chews and sniffs

and turns her head and sniffs again

Discerning odors I have never smelt

Do deer dislike aromas we abhor?

Do they judge the world they see and hear and smell

As good or bad - or only, is it safe?

I watch the mother deer lift up her right rear leg

And scratch her chin.

The mourful cries of coyotes pierce the night -

I saw one once, walking down our road

At dusk,

He turned and looked at me with yellow eyes.

I wished him well.

Mountain lions, too, live not too far from us

Sleek, gold majestic creatures, like the deer, astute

In all their senses, searching prey to keep their

Cubs alive.

Sometimes our deer are gone a day or two

Sometimes a week – I watch for them -

And when the deer return, I thank my God

For keeping them unharmed for one more day.

And then I wonder what kind of God it is

That fills the world with predators and prey?