poems in progress - Twilight of Good Graces

from
Just Grow UP!

Twilight of Good Graces

Across the bay, helpless neighbors snarl the commute
and moodiness lowers the general bar
to shoulder-padded mumbles—
who rules, who shows who.
Air superiority is the talk of the town.
Waiting for them we head off
to see herring feed themselves to seals—
riveting kersplashes in a hierarchy unseen since
since ape stood up in the evolution to man,
only a bony tail there, a patch of fur here,
vegetarians and hawks—the idea of balance
indelible in the circus.
Wells dropped to hit-and-miss after the heat,
then summer showers kicked in minimally.
The only real hope lie in alien saucers
forming a holding pattern over Mt. Rainier,
smoke-signaling rain—
even my green Oma from the lovely Schwarzwald knew
days blue enough to send us to the lake in the foothills
and sit in the sun until a freckle spread
and we felt like a Nutty Buddy after the hard work of splashing around half naked.
The onslaught of cumulonimbus hardly crossed our minds,
was something cyclical, shapes in the sky barometric.

Drawing by Antje Kaiser, copyright 1996, all rights reserved.