It’d be nice to write poems
about simple pleasures:
Humming birds,
nectar,
and
thirsty first kisses.
But the way things
Are going–
can’t do it.
Drought chokes the throats of my long lost lovers
And bombs buzz where the bees should be.
The kindly sun-warmed shepherd,
Tending his flock
Has been made to submit
to a mutton clerk,
Who coldly keeps the clock.
I’ve no green garden,
no gate to lock—
Like you,
I wander the aisles of a store
Picking out the peasant thumbs
from the racks of prunes and plums;
Trying not to kick some unseen
skull across a floor.
Yet asked to fill a rattling rolling cage with more
and more…
Who could stock such gaping shelves
With words of light and love?
The world has drained the last coo
From this dove.
