What happened here!?
Hindsight’s forever rebuke
“the toys just jumped out of the toybox”
“Billy did it!”
“Billy wasn’t here and toys can’t jump!”
I was too young to request counsel.
Billy had an iron clad alibi.
He had been in “time out”
When the alleged offense was committed.
I was sentenced to “Time Out”
20 Minutes, no bail
No TV and a cold supper.
My fate never changed
As whenever that…that question
Was asked…I muttered….
“Billy did it”
And yes….Billy had an alibi
And I looked guilty….
I tried blaming the dog once
Until it was proven
The dog had an alibi
He couldn’t pee that high up on the tree trunk
I should’a named that dog …..
BILLY
Hoarfrost on barbed wire
holds until the first blackbird
tests the silver thread—
The dawn was never asked, if
it intended to stay cold.
A gold wedding band
leaves an imprint underneath
beside weathered skin—
The pale pledge there lingers long
after finger tires of it.
Knots tied in dry strings
to remember promises
slowly surrender
when they're immersed in water
to the form they never lost.
The builder chooses
the straightest tree trunk for beams—
High in the branches
magpies nest in the curved limbs
that bow when wild winds arrive.
Seaweed on the rocks
remembers yesterday's tide
higher than today's—
No wave returns for its mark
only salt lingers there still.
A watermark sleeps
inside each folded message
with a hidden date—
that rises with candle warmth
to tell the truth, time knew well.
Snake held by its tail,
its mouth swinging so freely
circling round the arm—
Every vow has the same aim
to taste the hand that shaped it.
The face in the glass
nods before it answers back
they both know their names—
The one who made promises
has long become someone else.
The plumber man fell asleep
with ash on his lips, losing
track of his cerebral train
John Boy with his stained new teeth
and guns of oil on his stone hands
Paining tires, chainsaws, the
garage ceiling
seasoning the turning of a leaf
John Boy's hounds piss on the porch
warping wood with smoke and sulfur
Is shooting blind since the judge took
his gun from his holster
John Boy stopped drinking a little too late
his brain full of holes, just like
a tree trunk to a woodpecker's peck
As he drunkenly recants the psalm
'I get no respect!'
Saw two love birds arguing,
not a pretty flight – one flew
left while still holding on --
as the other persisted right;
the tree-trunk ahead held its ground...
When I was a boy one thing I could do
That my brother couldn't at all you see
He was better on the ground that's so true
But I learned he couldn't shimmy a tree
He'd run faster than my little legs could bend
Then lift far more then I would even dare
But the soft maple tree he couldn't ascend
While I would be twenty feet in the air
One day I ascended the maple tree trunk
While he stood looking up from the ground
When he starts shaking the tree my heart sunk
My brother was ornery this day I had found
I hung on for dear life until he quit
When I came down, he then laughed just a bit
218.
My 34th Leaf
Got thee from tree trunk
Standing position
A flowering plant
Common on house yards
“Orchid” leaf it is!
Owned by choir member
Dulce Pirote
Maybe she's the one
Who planted it there
A new acquaintance
Fifth day of August
Year Twenty Thirteen
It is a Monday
Local holiday
It's our Town Fiesta
Clinging on tree trunk
On a small landscape
As we go outside
Front yard of the house
Near its entrance gate
Fiesta remembrance
Another rare chance
First time with church choir
A worthy memoir
Fun to be with them!
-08/05/2013
(Dumarao)
*My Toladas Collection
the squirrel had stopped in the middle of the tree trunk
I thought at first, he was counting his nuts and junk
But it was a daisy he held in his hand that day
“She loves me, she loves me not,” I heard him say.
Isn’t that sweet? I said to my man who rolled his eyes.
A squirrel who speaks English, this was a marvelous surprise.
I ran out there to make some conversation with him that day.
He showed me his fluffy tail moves and ran promptly away.
tiger like striping
forearm looks like a white tree trunk
finger leaves at tip
smooth and half way warm
polka dotted with freckles
tiny grandma hands
I hauled my seven book up to the treehouse in the morning
these library books were about E.S.P., runes, and tarot cards
I live in an Iowa small town, where everybody knows everybody
The neighbors are out hanging clothes on their clotheslines
They wave to each other and chatter as they pin
I watch them for a tiny bit, hearing every word
mainly boring stuff, like what they are fixing for dinner
One of them is a terrific pie baker, I try to hear her words
Just laughter from her today; laughing while pinning?
It seems strange to eleven-year-old me.
I am camouflaged in my treehouse wedged in cottonwood trees.
Their silver green pointed leaves hide me from view.
I have a pillow up here, which I lean on, as I read.
Movement catches my eye. A large black ant.
I follow his progress up the tree trunk. He is frantic.
I wish the librarian would let me get more than seven books.
I have to go back every day for my next seven.
Every day I do this for the entire summer.
This is the summer that I read – mysteries, autobiographies and fiction.
Reading takes me to other places than small town Iowa.
cottonwood tree trunk
sparkles with silver sequins
a gorgeous array
The light is thinning.
A ragged man struggles
to carry an unboxed
large plasma screen.
He is walking it home,
he has no home
still, he is walking it,
but now it's raining
the TV becomes
a slippery umbrella.
There is so little light to be had,
no one goes to the park
not even to stare at the sky,
not even to walk a dog,
not even to smoke a cigarette
huddled behind
a dripping tree trunk.
A TV slides down
a slick grassy bank.
A bad day for minstrels,
knights and stray unicorns.
An old woman,
hands wrapped
in fingerless wool,
tugs at an abandoned
plasma screen.
After sliding down a grassy bank
she gives up.
Beetles spill out of a ruck of turf.
Her heels disappear into a gray light.
The beetles take shelter
under a large television.
The overgrown Amazon ape
With his furry tree trunk wide nape
Flew over wearing a red satin cape
Birds cringed at his cumbersome shape
He carried a bag made of crepe
In plum, fuchsia and possibly grape
A fancy one-of-a-kind hairy ape
What is this love we seek to find and hold?
It twists and contorts, resistant to enfold.
A surprising elusive shadow, that pops up from the mist?
When we least expect it, to enlist when kissed.
This love actually, defies logic and common sense!
For whom we love, truly deeply is beyond any pretense,
Any hope that its stickiness can be shed,
With a flick, a kick, a denial, once, twice said.
Love is persistent, won't go away, or fade.
Its inception is the exception that once made,
Is burned or carved into a tree trunk or rock,
As an emblem, a shout, broadcast around the clock.
For love is a joy, a delightful happenstance!
A meeting by chance, then with poise, to prance and dance.
September has mottled the forest maples.
South of here, zombie cicadas
chafe heated thighs,
but North of Tippecanoe
Shawnee trails lead into autumn.
We take photographs,
but the green still smothers
scattered red and yellow threads.
You touch a mossy tree trunk,
as if sensing the smoldering fuse
that will soon burn stale air
into golden sparks - a fire
that will paint from the inside out.
Too early, she says.
We head back down I-75,
where summer still consumes
the glut and vapor
of unemptied trash cans.
my daddy built me a tree house
in the back forty of our property
between two cottonwood trees
I used to take seven books up there
with a pillow and read for hours
during the summer when I was eight,
nine, ten, eleven and twelve
there was such comfort watching black ants
travel up and down the bumpy tree trunk
listening to the neighbors chatting and laughing
they met at their clotheslines
I always knew who was watching tv
I could see the lights flicker from their windows
I knew who was arguing too
Queen of my world
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