Floodlight

At the peak of the barn carved

Shadows

Into the silent salt box house that

Leaned too close

To the country road I traveled

Every night

Its wide-eyed

Curtain-less windows

Stared

Onto an empty gravel driveway

And a treeless yard

With its cropped

Black grass

Some nights I would slow the car and

Peer into its hollows

Searching

For a glow

A movement

Someone standing in the dark

Looking back

I Needed You, Niagara Falls

Your cascading cataracts

Constantly coursing

Confidence

Cleaving the copious

Clouds

That congregate in this cranial

Crevasse

Clamoring to contradict my

Compendium of

Concern and consequence

Sing Out

Old troubadour

Forgotten prophet

Your songs have returned

From their forty year

Pilgrimage

To a world

Changed

But the same

Then

The wind carried your fervent words

Effortlessly

Now

Your voice cracks against the

Nostalgic breeze

Game of Words

'Sometimes'

Is the versatile Queen

Patient

Supreme

The Bishop and Rook

On disparate paths

Are 'always' and 'never'

Respectively

The expendable Pawns

Are the first to come out

Eager conjunctions

'And'

'Or'

'But'

The mysterious trail of the

Knight asks

'Who'

'What'

'When'

And the King

He is

'Yes'

Capture to win

I Predict

The common man now

Has the things that

In the past

Were saved for kings

The food we eat from

TV trays

Was royal nosh in ancient days

So

I predict some years from now

Foie gras chips

Truffle chow

One full aisle of chocolate bars will

Give way to various caviars

The frozen dinner fare

Will be

Quail Escabeche or

Duck Sous Vide

For fast-food there's

McEscargot

McGratin fries

McGelato

The only question that I have is

What will future gourmets crave?

With nothing left unique

Or rare

What

Will the Food Network air?

The Biggest Spider I Ever Saw

Was high up in the corner of the

Eave behind the downspout

His web was thick as cotton

And you could barely see 'im

He wasn't movin' any

He was just waitin'

I went back inside the house

Mom was watchin' TV

She was real quiet

There was smoke and people running

And the skyscrapers fell like

A pile of logs in a campfire

And the man on the TV said

Planes flew into them

I went back outside

I looked for planes in the blue sky

Then I found a long stick and

Went back to the corner of the house

The spider was gone now

I poked his web and curled it

Around the end of my stick

But he didn't come out so I

Wiped the stick on the green grass and

Broke it over my knee

Yeah, that was the biggest spider I ever saw

Lapping

The water pats the

Sailboat hulls

And wooden legs of

Piers

Lap

Lap

Listen

Buoys and gulls

The heartbeat of the lake

Against the break-wall

Rocks

Lap

Lap

Warm summer sun

Slows the pulse

Beneath the fishing dock

Lap

Lap

Mooring line abandoned as

Serenity unfurls

Lap

Lap