Before Winter
Aspen tremble
Pines scratch
While the mountain accepts
The changing of the guard
Aspen tremble
Pines scratch
While the mountain accepts
The changing of the guard
—Ronald Edwin Lane, Weimar
____________________
IT’S ENOUGH
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento
Let's not talk—
here, take my hand—
let's just walk.
Rain filters the night
through soft porch light shadows
as we stroll into the mist
in balance and harmony.
Let's not talk—
here, take my hand—
let's just walk.
_____________________
Thanksgiving's over, but our give-away isn't; send your own poems about "enough" to kathykieth@hotmail.com by midnight, Sunday, Nov. 28 and I'll send you a free rattlechap of your choosing.
Michelle Kunert has had it with the shopping mania thing:
revbilly.com
I wish I could join this "Reverend Billy" guy in New York
(no, well, he's not really a "minister" though you could say that)
His "Church of Life After Shopping"
starts with Black Fridays as Buy Nothing Day
and begs for the rest of the holiday shopping season
to dodge the crass consumer culture
telling people what they need to buy
He travels with "choirs" around towns
who sing about simple joys such as not getting in debt
and how buying a lot less is of course kinder to the earth
Interesting, when considering that despite the repression
around 13.6 million people
have not yet paid up their shopping debt from last year!
(http://www.credit.com/news/credit-debt/2010-11-01/consumers-still-carrying-holiday-debt-from-last-year.html)
People could instead consider that,
while it is a blessing to give rather than receive,
maybe merely spending one's time on someone can also be a gift
because once again there will be a lot of "lonely" people
—those who need to be visited
in a lot less-than-desirable places than shopping malls,
including nursing homes and prisons
or even those who need someone to welcome them at their residence
and possibly, even better yet, share a lunch or dinner.
—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
______________________
Sometimes I feel like leftover turkey
cold dried-up meat and bones
Lesser desired pieces
to be used up or else thrown away
wedged between pieces of bread,
the taste hidden with condiments
and beginning smells of decay
—Michelle Kunert
______________________
QUITE ENOUGH
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento
The trees had had quite enough
of just standing around while the
carefree wind was whistling through
their branches. It was time to change
things.
So they reached upward as only
trees can do and prayed for a miracle.
It came in the form of a tornado.
Suddenly the trees were uprooted and
they whistled loudly and boldly right
alongside the wind: dancing partners.
QUITE ENOUGH II
Where is it written that we must be
alarmed about waking up?
Sage scientists report about how essential
it is we get enough sleep. Each alarm
clock should be imprinted with a warning
label like the cancer warnings on cigarette
packages that their use could actually be
harmful to our health.
QUITE ENOUGH III
Call me hard to please, but I believe that
when we pay athletes and performing
artists a super abundance of money, we
deserve a super performance. Every time.
Good is unacceptable. Better than ever
before is still not nearly enough. The
lowest effort to justify the obscene money
changing hands must be a new high
standard of best, and that will only be
good enough once.
_____________________
Today's LittleNip:
MIDDL SCHOOL
—Carl Brnard Schwartz
I got an “ ” for ffort, but somon stol it.
_____________________
—Medusa
Ancient Peruvian art-carved stone
Photo by Michelle Kunert
