Lost?

—Photo by Richard Hansen the Taller, Sacramento

 

GONE
—Caschwa, Sacramento

My father passed away
Friday the 13th of March
in '92, 21 years ago

said what he had to say
told cleaners not too much starch
taught me the things he wanted me to know

he predicted that our
government would get too big
to really represent the av'rage joe

trimming people power
from a tree to just a twig
he was a good dad and I miss him so

_____________________

TIME AWAY
—Caschwa

This wasn't easy work
it took me almost a year
just to save up enough loud rattling cans

to string behind the Merc
and drive off with sweetie dear
holding up our bright shiny wedding bands

our anniversary
celebration began thus
renewing our vows and baring our tans

it was necessary
to make a sizable fuss
and spend an hour with our adoring fans

____________________

BIG AND BIGGER
—Caschwa

Grew up in Cold War California where
as far as one could see there was
big Navy, bigger ocean,
big trees, bigger mountains
big ag, bigger deserts
big corporations, bigger smog
big riots, bigger government
big economy, bigger deficit,
big amusement parks, bigger dreams
big and bigger motion picture stars and events

then they started taking the big trees away
to make room for bigger man-made enterprises
as if business growth trumped Mother Nature
makes one kinda' wonder

Big oil interests in Texas give us a family
of presidents living large with the legacy
of comfortable retirement
Alaska comes up with a very big voice
from a very small town
running for the highest office
of the world's biggest super power

wealthy Chinese investors provide big loans
to American consumers who have convinced
themselves they are so well schooled in how
pioneer industrialists parlayed small resources
into giant successful business concerns that
they are manifestly guaranteed the same results
(Elvis impersonators on every corner come to mind)
makes one kinda' wonder
 

____________________

SWEET DREAMS

—Caschwa

T'was the most wonderful sleepover ever
the evening filled with true friends and good jokes
plenty of comfort food and tasty bever-

ages, outside a variety of smokes
all night long we laughed and played some naughty games
ones we certainly did not learn from our folks

while the night drew on we forgot our own names
as we traded and mismatched pajama tops
looking like the infirmary at St. James

we danced to the top forty, oldies and pops
till neighbors just wanted to send us away
so badly they threatened to call in the cops

woke to an email on the very next day
SEE ME IN MY OFFICE RIGHT NOW, DON'T DELAY!

Chickweed in Overwintered Garden

—Photo by Taylor Graham

LOST TIME
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

How did I miss the wild
plum that must have bloomed last week?
A few white blossoms, now the tree's in leaf,

our ewes with lambs have filed
down through pasture to the creek
as if springtime greened-over every grief—

wild plum arching over
where two years ago we lost
a lamb—as if sweet April were a thief.

It's spring. Vetch and clover,
blossoms on a west-wind tossed—

lost syllables, a flower-phrase so brief. 

____________________

AN HOUR LOST IN TRAFFIC?
—Taylor Graham

She won't text
while driving, except
at stoplights
with pencil
on paper, scribbling lines of
poems she'll forget

if she can't
catch them on the go—
mind faster
than the speed
limit. Don't sit there wordless
as the moments fly!

____________________

MOUNTAINS GOLD AS SUNRISE
—Taylor Graham

The man who used to climb lava cliffs
to catch raptors on their nests,
and band them, give them human numbers

to be digitized in databases
inside stone buildings a continent away;
mathematics of fledging and flight,

migratory dances
the ancients might have recorded
on papyrus or in song—

that man is kept now in a shuttered room,
a kind of sterile white nest. When
will he fledge? Should no one be looking,

he pulls open the blinds and gazes out
the window. Where is the raven
of changing colors by season and light?

Not here, in this world where men
fly underground, and Earth opens her
mouth but not in song.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

LOST HOUR, LOST CONTACT, LOST RESPECT,
OR, GET BACK IN THE PICKUP AND STOP
EMBARRASSING US
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

He was back downstate after a
Semester in Chicago at
The Art Institute.  Asked him
If he wanted a drink.
“Ah, l’heure bleu!”
“Pabst?  No, man.  We
Drink Budweiser.  What’s
Wrong with you?”

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors, including their kerfing (see Form to Fiddle With in the green box at the right of this) and their fooling around with our Seed of the Week: The Lost Hour.

—Photo by Richard Hansen