You see them rise while still in the suburbs,
the rings of hills, the wilderness buffer;
smaller, more round than what waits further on,
some sport cabins atop with views quite long.
Down on the road some houses still pop up
for folks who hate the concrete, noise, and trucks,
and at crossroads, small stores with country themes,
selling jerky, t-shirts with wild scenes.
Then small motels folks claim on the weekend,
cars with kayaks, across the ponds to wend.
Just down from that, a smallish petting zoo,
with local critters strutting in plain view,
the kind you wish you could see in the woods,
but they all hide, and that’s for their own good.
Then a small lake, stubbed with second homes,
the kind that you hope someday you might own,
weathered docks and fishing boats on the lake,
could the trout here be big enough to take?
But now the peaks are stretching for the clouds,
buildings thin out, the road the forest crowds,
the foothills gone, these mountains your escape,
a wild land, the kind owned by the state.
When things are lost or just misplaced,
It’s more than just annoying,
For time spent looking’s such a waste
While good moods face destroying.
Since even in a smallish space
There’s lots of room for hiding,
So when you’ve searched most every place,
Frustration’s not subsiding.
If giving up is not a choice,
You’re stuck without direction
And even if your inner voice
Is battling dejection
There has to be a point at which
The chances shrink to slender
Of finding what you lost, so switch
Your goal and just surrender.
The trails runs the edge for several miles,
a clifftop walk, it is no great trial,
atop a long precipice of limestone,
where big, black vultures soar, and make their home,
a rugged wall, by ancient peoples known,
so it looms, this stubborn piece of wild.
Atop it a state park has sat for years,
small fences up to calm a parent’s fears,
but you know kids, they’ll always go ahead
and fearlessly peer over that great ledge,
the beauty awes even in their young heads,
like all souls, they’re stirred by the wonder here.
Some metal stairs descend down to the base,
so folks can walk along the smallish caves,
‘hold up the earth’ in a picture they snap,
see Minekill Falls, and walk around its back,
find passageways where Iroquois made tracks,
and Tory soldiers hid in olden days.
It seems so close, you can see Albany,
but when the winds blow you almost believe
that this place is at the edge of the earth,
like some lost land you found after long search,
quite thankful that people have seen the worth
of these tree-clad cliffs in their majesty.
Injured by an ice cube
'Tis hard to comprehend,
removal from it's tray
a spike of ice extends.
This dagger like stalagmite
did pierce my very skin,
a chilling site, believe me,
and much to my chagrin!
Some blood did run, yet briefly,
a smallish wound you see,
same ice that did the spearing
I used for healing me!
She pooh-poohed his smallish gift.
He looked glum and she looked miffed.
No diamond in sight,
She did not delight.
Her love for him was set adrift.
Planet Norway calling
We see a TV program from Norway, a smallish nation bent on becoming green, building windmills on top of mountains and in the sea, filling the landscape with rotating blades that have an annoying sound and does not make the famous landscape more prettier.
You see, to finance this dream of an unsullied nation at ease with itself, it has to sell polluting oil and gas by the tankers full and the more expensive the electric dream becomes, more oil and gas must be sold..
To reason to the leaders of this electric manic disorder, is impossible they act as the have found the final truth and God is no longer in the details
Can anyone explain to the Norwegian government their
country is not a “Planet Norway,” drifting about in the galaxy oblivious of other planet but is a small part of Europe and the rest of the world, that pollution affects us all and that the solution must be based on common sense and together with other nations.
What seems an impossible feat
of forte and noble resolve
to boldly face the bitter gale,
a smallish bird feathers the wind.
His wildly beating wings afford
what seems an impossible feat
of willfulness against his foe,
as he hunts for suitable prey.
He hovers so he can find his
preferred meal scuttling around in
what seems an impossible feat
to escape the eyes of the bird.
Such beauty in nature is rare
and one should be awed by the sight
of the kestrel’s stamina in
what seems an impossible feat.
Yesterday
the wind blew open
a crack in the air
A smallish space
so t'wd seem
squeezed just between
the here and there.
‘Tis said
a good deed
an' a heartfelt prayer
can let one briefly stare
into that space
where eyes may see
yet
not quite be.
I hear behind me
the fleeting sounds
of a large green alligator
slithering through the weeds
it snaps at my butt
and takes a smallish chunk of me
setting me free
to ponder
behind a tree
how lucky
one can be
to be set free.
“Give me the phone Effie.
I have to make a call.”
She handed it over to me
and walked into the hall.
The inspector had no clues.
He asked for my two cents,
asked me to give him my views.
I didn’t; the call was intense.
The dame had come in
asking for my advice
two days ago and then
was arrested by Vice.
I had seen the smallish
puncture, blood pooling,
and I wanted to abolish
the coroner’s ruling.
The wound was there,
but he missed the needle
lying next to the chair.
He tried to wheedle.
If I couldn’t get the cops
to do their job, I’d need
to pull out all stops
to find a hard lead.
For Gershon...with smiles
Inspired by, but not entered in, Natasha L Scragg’s Start Sleuthing Poetry Contest
The gardener's hand was feeble,
the poet's hand was staid
Yesterday's dreams were buried
with seeds, last year were laid
Yet flowers grew in rainstorms
though coupled with the weeds
Butterflies came to visit
The gardener's heart was eased
A smallish yellow butterfly
on heal of monarch great
Across the wild garden flew
and not a moment late
For though her wings were
little, and she was very small
Somehow, she found momentum
to fly up the garden wall
The gardener watched in wonder
in the scene that she was gifted
Each nuance of this garden free
Her poet's heart uplifted
The springtime long now ended
and summers turned to fall
The gold was tinged with silver
and a fairy came to call
I’m almost out of flour
And my sugar’s at the end.
I do not have sweet butter
On which I, of course, depend.
Since I’m not going into stores,
I’m ordering from sites
That quickly get depleted
From competing appetites.
Yet with my grandma’s recipe,
Each Chanukah I bake
The cookies I grew up on,
Long and tedious to make.
I scraped together just enough
To make a smallish batch.
Most years I mail some to my sibs
But that I had to scratch.
Yet still, I rolled the dough and watched
The shapes take form and brown.
On Chanukah, I couldn’t let
My kids and grandkids down.
The horses are a galloping today
Their hooves clacking against the cobblestones.
They clomp right by in a most lovely way.
Woman in carriage giving tiny moans.
Cancer prevails in her smallish bones.
Eighteen sixty-two. Disease has no name.
Big C makes it impossible to hide.
This poor woman will never be the same.
I Turned My Back
A spirit casually approached, shat its parched load,
producing a small cloth it worked its hands furiously,
fashioning of clay and soot something to assuage a
deep yearning in its soul, something that looked,
as it looked to itself.
I turned my back to the left, my sight took in these images,
touched to my core this phenomenon pierced hot like a steel blade,
searing a scaring wound punctually within, permanently set.
I let out a scream, which carried back into the canyons and the recesses where smoke resides apart from fire, where water breaks into its separate molecules.
A world-like landscape emerges from a thinning air, dusty and rough in texture, sprouting forth smallish shrooms in iridescent hues, resembling footprints in snow they shimmer and vibrate.
The spirit and itself have moved in and around this landscape before,
leaving their footprints, their mark.
The immediacy of my experience continues to pierce impressionably,
I am now a marked man, my goal; adapt consciously.
Invisible predators steal my soul
taking me to a bowl of stale potato chips
dunking me down beneath the cigarette butts
That were not ever well-hidden in the bottom
Plunking me down firmly with their beady
little hands and their alien eyes. Laughing maniacally
while I thrash around, trying to get free
Then they grab me up having a better idea
And plunk me face down, bound but not gagged,
Which would have been invariably better,
into a smallish bowl of cold, half-eaten oatmeal.
I die ungracefully, and irritated.
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