We wear veils
when our voice
doesn’t work
so much to say
it tumbles about
cluttering thought
the room is too small
the sentence too brief
nothing fits in easily
speech halts
___________________________
THE CATS KNOW
Today the old dog
was put to sleep,
yes, death, she was
suffering too much
we couldn’t know clearly
but falling down stairs
pooping as she struggled
to walk across a room
but she was a hundred and one
and in just a few days changed.
The light went out instantly
warm stillness remaining
into the earth before it cooled
we cover our feelings
with shovels of clay
but cannot forget
her devotion
always protecting
her sheep, her back to us
looking outward,
The cats know.
_____________________
From Camus, pg 23 of the Rebel
‘Envy, resentment; an auto intoxicant, an evil secretion in a closed vessel, and prolonged impotence’
Essex owns its saga
It flung forth schooners for a century
from its little river, into all of the oceans
using oak from its hills, and its skills.
But now the polis work elsewhere.
The town rents land, coveted, envied, on a point
jutting far into the marsh, turning tidal flows
around, a center of glorious sunsets
where sea thrust empties and fills
the wide wild grass space
and where there is envy.
that others should have enjoyed
the sky that harbors clouds of birds
majestic storm clouds lightening
heavens rage and sweet calm.
But the townies owning the land
could like predatory landowners
walk on it, disdain the tenants
who felt intrusion, the covetness
and some tenants and owners were angered.
So came the realtors and developers
who feed on anger and thirst for profits
to set fires in the hearts of the town
until they vowed to have no more tenants,
have them simply go away!
Now the ruin avarice brings ravages all
rats gnaw at the edges of a desolate
parking lot where tourists look at the view.