Hour Fourteen: Frog Proverbs

Eat your frogs so that by early evening you can delight in tomatoes, prepping them for winter in jars, the way gramma taught you. Together you sliced them, chasing the diced bits around the cutting boards like small children chase ducklings. Take your raincoat, and…

No New Home

The sounds just around the corner was a mystery The children listened for nights but still couldn’t solve it They tipped out one evening to see what they could find And just beside the neighborhood pond was a cute surprise The sounds were from a…

Word Choice (13)

The evening’s mystery began with peculated public money, a scarred elbow, children filling jars with tomatoes and frogs.   Of course, steam rose from the ground, Hot from the sun but wet from an afternoon sprinkle. He buttoned up his raincoat, lit his pipe,  …

Dear Mr. Whippy

Dear Mr. Whippy VCS Mr. Whippy is ganging up on me With his gang of thugs And his alphabets He hems and hrumphs and I know He knows how to rap knuckles With that stick He keeps telling me That Diacritacal marks come later First…

Matrix

Matrix Where snow capped mountains Shed their old skins And passes on life to the new; Where the ravens sing The song of death Where doom vanishes In the ambiance And secures the sky; Where ocean pays homage By touching the bottom Where waves lap…

Billy Willy #3

Billy Willy They’d be putting Billy Willy In the sad corner of the cemetery Near Mrs. Pringle’s children All four of them   The baby passed before She could blink at Her mother or Smile at her father   One of the twins The handsome…

Halfway

The dancing nouns have slowed.     Nervousness subdued.                    Kids home dogs feeling neglected confused Fingers achy minus the pain just eager to use them for writing again everyone has made this a true event so…

Fruits of my Labor

I stand at the open window On an evening warm and damp. The steam rises off the canning pot I slowly switch on a lamp. The tomatoes in their canning jars The children at my elbow At the open window I stand Hear the frogs…

Good night, Toronto

Night time in the city is smoke and sirens Carried on a cool breeze. Groups of twenty-somethings marching raucously between locales, Weaving between cars, drivers leaning on horns, Racing to beat hordes of pedestrians to intersections. Music, fast-paced and infectious, Drifting tantalizingly from doors opened…

Guilty As Charged

Alighting the stairwell She looked at me And in all seriousness, asked ‘Were you the one who drank all the coffee?’