Giving a Webinar: aka talking to the wall

I imagined them glued to
their computer screens as
my disembodied voice filled
their empty minds with fantastical
ideas, the most wondrous theories,
salves to the tedium of their inner
lives; instead they probably read
the latest issue of Newsweek, Cosmo
or The New York Times,
looking up occasionally at
the clock and wondering when
they might politely sign off
without anyone particularly
noticing.

The 501st

and when it started
it was a dare,
to run across the tracks
when the train was coming,
to eat 15 hot dogs in 1 minute,
to write every day
to someone you love,
the last one was the
easiest, 500 poems later.

Walking Keys

when they stopped
for coffee and sweetrolls,
the keys got bored and went
for a stroll down the avenue,
hitching a ride with a man pushing
his cart, having lost his cane, and
he looked at the keys in his hands,
not thinking they might belong
to someone stopping for coffee
and sweetrolls and he continued
rolling down the street wondering
what to do with them, it being too hard
to turn his rolling cane around
until he came to the post office
and dropped them off to be mailed
to far off lands,
while beautiful damsels, having drunk
their coffee and finished their sweetrolls
searched their pockets and hand bags,
being in quite a dither as to where
the keys had gone wandering off to,
when the man returning from his
rolling down the hill saw them and
told them to run, run quickly to the
post office before the keys were
flown to a far off office, when all they
needed was to be there at the coffee
shop waiting patiently to unlock the
two bicycles secured to the post
while the two beautiful damsels finished
their coffee and cakes.

Driving in Queen Anne, Seattle

his mind must be warped to
believe the streets are square,
neatly ordered E-W, N-S,
Avenues and Streets,
not like Boston, he said.
the streets are neither E or W,
nor are they S or N, meandering
alongside the rivers and
seas, only slowly crossing the lines
on the topo map.
it is like Boston, where a right turn
does not unequivocably mean right,
but perhaps right minus 30 degrees,
or right plus ten.
his mind must be warped think
the roads are straight.

Rocks

the children were in the street again today,
a six year old boy and his two year old sister,
Guenevere, way too young to be dodging cars.
he had a fascination with sewers.
I often saw him over the last two years
peering way down inside the sewer drain
for raccoons which he saw come out at night,
climbing straight up the brick on the side of his house.
he wondered how they could do that and wished
he could too. He wanted to watch all night
but his dad made him go to bed.
Today, the children were in the street again,
gathering stones for a trail to the sewer
for raccoons or other interested parties.
He was sure other little boys would like
to know of such fascinating things

in the neighborhood.

For Cecile and Vincent

Camembert house

after they all left,
picnic baskets loaded in the car,
blankets left behind, folded neatly
on stripped beds, water and electricity
turned off, the Camembert
continued to ripen in the lower
left hand drawer of the refrigerator,
for two months, maybe three,
the smell blooming to fill
not only the drawer, but the
whole refrigerator, impregnating
every miniscule crack, every pore
with Camembert of the strongest
variety so that when they came back,
so jubilant, ready to fill the refrigerator
with the delectable goods they had
just purchased, the house fell silent
as everyone held their noses
and then burst out laughing.

.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/allolex/13328702/

Birthday Present

back then I didn’t
dare wish openly for a girl,
another boy would be a fine
addition to the family, it brings
bad luck to have a preference.
but
I secretly hoped, keeping
my wish close to my chest
as I waited every day for
the new arrival, everyday
an effort in the unrelenting
heat, to wait, to wait
until I held my newborn
baby girl in my arms
and cried with

happiness.