One-a-week turns into two-a-month.

The poems have been hard to find. I've been looking for the string theory of poetics, addressing loss, grief, disillusionment, freedom, democratic dissent, love, sex, semiotics, a definition of semiotics, vocation, religion, or the post modern decline of religion and the clash of believers. Written with humor. I'm aiming lower now, just trying to write and see what happens. I listened to a Tom Waits interview and that was helpful.

Opal dances to The Clash

a shake here
there to the bass hands here
like she's waiting to be grabbed
by a square dance partner
she all of 91
Joe Strummer's efforts aren't lost on her
unwinding after Thanksgiving, a shuffle
a small dance
at its purest when you don't know the tune
when you are less familiar with yourself even
anybody who can walk can dance no matter how disjointed
clumsy efforts
are still efforts

I write knowingly about birds in poems

after learning the habits of the hummingbirds
in our backyard, about how they perch
eat, chase each other, how they sound

I hear them at night after they've roosted in the laurel hedge
see them outside the picture window
then flit back into the lilac bush,
their destination imbued with greater meaning due to the apparent specificity
and speed of their flight

I begin to understand the bird allusions in poems
Kooser's sparrow, Stevens' blackbird, blue birds

We watch these creatures do one thing we can't
and are reminded of other longings, freedom, lost love, doubt

a child's love for the parent, despair
the wonder in the expectant
and the loss