Something Black and Red

Walking to work

Covering my ears as always

Past the scream and grind

Of savage machines

My feet deep in heavy snow.

Suddenly I saw:

By the construction site sat

Balanced on the edge of a curb

Something black and red

Under a thick layer of ice

Immune to the December sun.

In those days I didn't know

what a scarlet tanager 

looked like dead

or sounded alive.

Office

I’ve no office of my own.
No walls. Roofs. No machines.
No fancy bi-weekly checks to sign.
No sick pays. No deadlines.
No pens. Staples. Wastebaskets.
Have no forever-ringing phones.
No office politics. No gossips.
No vacation pays. And that's just fine!

For I write on elephant ears
with a scented aubergine ink
from sweet juicy blackberries I eat
I gossip with mockingbirds and cranes
And when sick I sleep under the rain
that cools my burning sweaty forehead
In the scent of hyacinths I get paid
in stocks and lilacs and peonies
I've no deadline since when the sun sets
the starry night is just as open and pleased
to shine down and caress me with a breeze
I sleep where I live and live where I work
surrounded by myriad office-less livings
I hear the cicadas and crickets singing
and see the sunlight and shadow's artwork
and feel the leaves absorbing the light of day
and giving us life without receiving a pay

I like it here

News of an accident

The father is alive, alert. 
The mother—doctors say—is too. 
But not the Skylark: it is wrecked. 
A nameless something else was killed.    
"The children," we regret, "are dead." 
And grandpa?  Grandma?  "Too," they said. 
But flowers, pastries, hats...intact.
The onyx colored dress, untorn.

The causes here remain unknown. 

Although the bones are red,
and smoke has spread,
beyond the dark I see
that serrated skyline, 
with same array of peaks—
but now to me they seem
exact and bleak.

But life ignores our pleas. 
So sway, the willow trees;
go on, the roads, as laid;
the Earth, as cold and gray.
While it spins and revolves,
creatures evolve and learn,
and skies around it burn
and spit, the Earth's no more
a pit. But still portend,
spoken words, and express;
observed are facts, they're named
and claimed; machines are made;
money produced and paid;
memories form then fade;
poems are measured and penned; 
Yet life‒my own‒can't be,
ever again the same.