Modern Art

I watched my granddaughter coloring

the other day in the car as we drove somewhere,

coloring to pass away the miles and the minutes.

Her fingers tapped the screen of her phone,

a random rapid tapping, and the close-up segment

of a picture, zoomed in, turned to color,

one shape at a time, like magic, no crayons

to melt and mar my seats in the summer heat!

Fascinated, I tried it, too, downloaded

on my own phone and in the privacy of my home,

but it lacked something, something was missing,

even the stress relief she claimed it helped;

mere frustration for me, touching a spot

and a rich hue coming from my finger tip, no decisions

to make about color and texture, proper shading,

that sense of art and reality melding,

no waxy smoothness or rolled paper rough

against my fingers, fat and arthritic, no more

digging through an old cigar box of broken nubs

thrown together, shaken about and rattling

looking for sepia, burnt umber, orange-red, and

red-orange, paperless and unmarked,

the right shade for a rose lightly brushed

with a contrasting color and outlined

in black, and a shadow from a sun situated outside

the picture’s frame, or a bright yellow in the corner

filtering down onto the page, but no page, now,

no coloring books with half-finished pictures,

scribbles and careful colors inside the lines,

no Mickey Mouse and Barbie Dolls, puppies and kittens,

just this tiny screen, shared with no one,

gone with the push of a button, never to be hung

on the refrigerator door dedicated to grandchildren’s

art, artwork shared in the years ahead, or reaching

for a midnight snack and remembering her,

watching her grow in art and form, herself,

a piece of art, a princess in a coloring book,

half finished, taking shape and brightly colored.

The Feast

A fat brown mouse burrows out of

his winter home in the snow bank,

an igloo’d den up against the foundation

of our home, his and mine. He sits outside

my window in the sunshine, contented and warmed;

and safe from my dogs barking above him,

shut fast behind the patio door, glassed in,

he feasts, now, unfazed, on the seed and suet

dropped by the birds dining at my feeder;

the squirrels are kept away by the dogs’ noise,

and the table set thus is his alone,

a celebratory feast on a winter’s day.

It was the Sound of Darkness

In the quiet of the night

the darkness begins its low

rumble, a dark sound rising

from the floor beneath me, on cue,

signaled by my parents turning out

their bedroom light, the last light

lit, as they climb into their beds,

leaving me alone in my room across the hall;

shadows begin to form in the far corners

and the darkness darkens around me.

This low sound the darkness makes, rising,

is soft at first, almost comforting,

the thrumming of a heartbeat, barely heard,

but it deepens quickly, breaking open

the quiet of the night, growing louder,

louder still, a wave gathering force

and crashing on the shore, a storm

rising, thunder and lightning, a thundering crack

to find me lying here, alone and scared,

the covers pulled tight to my chin, clutching

even tighter beneath the covers my stuffed

bear, Fred, my constant companion much worn

these dark nights alone, clutching me, even now,

in the darkness, being brave, trying to, in the low

rumble that it makes, the sound of darkness rising.

Hope is

Hope is ...
anticipating

the robins returning,

their cheer up, chirp

call from the trees

assuring us, again, 

that spring has come home.

The Street Poets

The street poets sit with their backs

against a sidewalked wall or in the entryway

of an abandoned shop, closed up tight,

a cigarette held in tobacco stained fingers,

lost in a haze of gray smoke rising, unfiltered,

and a bottle, bagged and open, couched at their feet,

down on their luck and luckless, down and out,

the rhythms of their poems tapping inside

their heads, rocking, a soft iambic repeating itself.

The street poets sit alone at a bakery,

slowly sipping coffee, sugar rich and dark,

the buzz and hum of crowded tables

but a background to the poems echoing

inside their heads, lost words searching

for themselves, their rightful selves,

the right words that never get said flowing

as onto empty pieces of paper, crumpled

and thrown helter-skelter to the wind.

The street poets sit behind a desk, suitably

attired in suit and tie, business-like in dress

and manner, shuffling papers and numbers

and juggled phone calls, memos tossed away,

dutiful, grudgingly, this drudgery of mindless

tasks set amidst the wheels of commerce and progress

moving nowhere, day after day after day, long days

stretching into weeks and months and years to retirement,

their words, merely recited, not of their own creation.

Theirs is the world of lost poems, poems

lost in the streets in that struggle to survive,

to make ends meet, words trapped with our backs

against the wall, lonely words thrown to the wind

unheard, and mindless days going nowhere, words

muttered mechanically, not our own poetry at all,

not the poems we hear given life, giving hope

to a rich world behind this veneer we see,

this vision envisioned by the street poets dreaming.