The Sun Rose Vermillion

The sun rose

vermillion, red and orange,

pink and light from the darkness

waning, a warning, perhaps,

to sailors, but to us waking early,

a wonderment rising in the eastern sky. 

The Groundhog

The groundhog, scared of his own shadow,

was right, as always, six more weeks

of this cold season, March 16^th, and

to remind us, Mother Nature delivered a load

of winter just two days before. The seasons are

her realm, not ours, subject to Nature’s whims,

Nature’s schedules, weather and seasons beyond us

but to prepare as we can, to deal with them, as we do,

when they come and when they go, complain as we might.

Teasing us with melting snow and shirt sleeve warmth,

winter’s gloom and cold are lingering still.

Remembering - A Poem for Cam

A soft crying, distant,

from the bedroom where

I lay him down, after we’d

exchanged funny faces, grins

and giggles, goofy sounds

to make us laugh, and he fell

asleep on my shoulder,

he who doesn’t really know

who I am, doesn’t know about

the DNA we share in our genes,

he whose only memory of me may

be gazing out a winter window, looking

starward for the second star to the right,

and straight on to morning, knowing

there’s someone there, watching him.

Those Dreams

The dreams we dream at night, the ones

we can’t remember in waking, only

their strangeness, a vague place, faces

we might have known, or not, bothered

that we can’t remember it, bothered

by its strangeness, and wondering

what it might have meant, if it meant

anything at all, trying to remember it,

trying to recall it … haunting us,

those dreams? Yeah, me, too.