Mindfullness

What I came for is here:

Grasses bending to the breeze

Sun blinking when titan clouds pass by

Warm wind pounding on my back

A dear friend who loves it too nearby

Perfect sand dollars at my feet

I'm not hot or cold, no thirst, no hunger

A mind as fine, inert as sand

No woes will find me here

Just those my heart let in.

The Good Old Days

A garage door rumbles up slowly. 

He must have seen me coming 

in my navy blue pleated skirt 

and white cotton blouse

walking home from school.

BAM!  his pants drop to the floor,

he waves congenially at me,

my eyes follow his 
down to a dangling 
turtle neck.

I won’t tell my parents about this old man 

on our street--They’d not let me walk

that way again. 

But I know what lurks 
on all streets leading home 

in South Bend, Indiana.

A stranger in the park tried

to coax me to his car,  my
father's friend, a captain,

trapped me in his bathroom 

with frantic french kisses.

That  Peeping Tom (one of many)!
My neighbor caught him

pulling on my bedroom window
while I lay dreaming
just blocks from Notre Dame.

And little Ronnie Gloster hung himself
when he was 10.
His dad knows why.

Tonight an author on the radio

speaks sadly about the good old days

when a child could walk to school

and home again without a care. 

I want to call him on the air.

There were no good old days
in South Bend, Indiana.  

Tick Tock

Between a tick
and a tock:
calamity ducks

or it may not.

In the crack from

tick to tock
life flows on


or maybe not.

A thing to fear,
a thing to knock
on wood for:
some luck
between
the tick and tock.

But not my son,
the cocky jock.
He fears little,
he fears not
the ticking
of the clock.

Howl

After lunch I wash down the kitchen counter 

And notice the Hackberry tree outside the window

Has grown taller, its branches much lengthened.

Suddenly I think of her

Among those green buds sprouting

along the skinny outstretched limbs

that point south and north, east and west.

Which way shall I look?

The question bursts like a bubble.

It’s not not heavy. It knocks me

into the chair. My lips form a zero 

and I howl like a dog tied to a tree.