Your photo
sends me back thirty years.
In your place,
I see your old man:
his suspicious eye
pot belly
and bald head.
He was nearly eighty
and always angry.
You hardly look younger
with your belly and baldness,
and you’re wearing
his discontent
like an inherited suit.
It’s ageing you more
than your years are.
Claws in the hall,
a staccato jack hammer,
burrow into my brain.
The A/C unit
roars and reverberates
in my skull.
Dull morning light
pierces through my eyelids
burning like a laser.
A storm roils
in my stomach washing up waves of
star studded agony.
Heat washes over, steam rises.
A freezing blizzard follows.
Desperately I seek
the peaceful
oblivion of sleep.
.
.
.
(Not having a good day!)
The scent
wound around the room
burrowed up the nostrils
and drained out eyes.
Set away
from sensitive noses
the lily’s petals have fallen
and still its heavy scent
fills the heated air,
present in death,
like warm memories
of you.
I remember you: new
baby powder smell
tiny ears like velvet
cries like a lamb
and here is your
baby daughter
in my arms.
Oh Christy,
who was the teacher
who provoked you?
Who was the teacher
who shredded your confidence,
made you feel powerless,
alone,
stupid?
.
Who?
.
For surely somewhere,
you sustained a deep hurt
that is still a festering wound,
that causes you to lash out
like an injured dog,
irrationally,
deflecting your pain with today’s power.
Some time ago,
there was a hurt,
that we are paying for.
.
Christy,
A counselor
would be cheaper.
.
.
.
It’s just a theory. But it would explain a lot.
Picket signs
propped in front of us
we strike for a better world
either strolling the side walk
or strumming harp
or guitar.
A strike is like a barbeque
for a cause
fueled by coffee and doughnuts
instead of beer and beef.
Like two hookers
in black vinyl trench coats
the crows stroll between the yellow lines
each watching the traffic
with one jaundiced eye.
The birch trees
are splattered with new green.
Buds like pretty envelopes, unfold
to reveal letters greeting
summer.
The wind chimes
on my back deck
honour the day
intoning like sonorous church bells
calling for celebratory worship.
Duck:
observe the legato ease of
geese relaxing in their Vs,
or eagles, reaching out their sides
to slice the skies,
even the tiny wren flies
from tree to tree efficiently,
but you,
you flap
over-happily
like a rattlepated,
frenzied drunk,
Duck.
Shawn L. Bird 