Third set (11 -- 15) 30 Days of Poems

Poems one through five
Poems six through ten

ELEVEN

I have collected a river, a hill, a flower, a song,
Forty three kitchens, and too many connections,
You say a word and i hear subtext,
This is not good,

I have the opposite of identity crisis,
I know who I am,
I am a library of books I've already read,
I've hung out with me for sixty years,
Waiting for me to do something,
Or start a conversation I haven't heard before.

On the upside,
I've found my sense of humor,
Watching busy Capricornian women achieve,
while I stroll by with sunlight in my hands,
Their willingness to tell me where and how I've failed,
along with a dollar ninety-eight, buys me a cup of coffee
in a cafe where books bloom,
I excel at falling short of expectations,
At sixty, I've only begun to accomplish this.

TWELVE

Old times need to be left alone
Too many used-to-bees
buzzing,

But today,
I let the summer of '93
sift down with the sun,

We'd gone to the beach
where once we made a home
Of a blue domed sky

We are winter weary
living, for the moment,
In a town as
grey as old coffee,

Missing my babies,
now grown, and in their own
created spaces,
I imagined a perfect past together,
Each day deliberate
and satisfied.


THIRTEEN

The number begs black cats
Come stepping across November
under bare-boned trees,

But we're on the underside of that
Waiting for the world to turn.

(hah! That wasn't a poem, that was a weather report. Try again)

give me thirteen
in a circle
around a focused wish,
chanting something
our grandmothers tried
to forget

the spell simmers,
sifting our imagined tomorrows,
their lost yesterdays,
intent on what was
and what may be,

(? and then?)

FOURTEEN

I want to amble down a street
In a town I don't know,
Hear my shoes on the sidewalk,
Watch the sun slide up an edge
Like it's trying to climb the blocks
back into the sky.
Nod to people who nod to me
And no one casts a second glance.


FIFTEEN

Take the path behind the billboard
past the last streetlight
Kick aside the beer cans,
Keep going until the river
imitates the wind in high mountains,

Tie your line to a tree branch,
bait the hook,
Sit on a rock in the water,
Lean your back against your bridge,
By the time the world finds you missing,
You'll be frying trout in a pan
Over a fire
Fuel by old goals.

Fourth set of poems (11-15) of 30 poems for Thirty Days