You’re Anything But Devine

With those khaki pants so benign.

Thus sayeth your pants:

While your hair is carefully styled—

Wavy, sleek—and face perfectly tone,

Shirt and sweater making you doctoral

Against rebellious facial hair and a troubled brow,

The sag in the back is dismaying,

Exposed zipper in the front is a knock,

The room all around leaves much wanting,

You will do everything tonight but cock block.

I Hear Past the Din to the Air

That whips at hair for attention.

Blaring cars

Barking dogs

Laughing kids

Are all in sense but not in sight

Lending vision to the trees

And a soul to see its way

Toward inspiration and industry
Down the hidden trail. I go.

Unexpected, I have found my place
Among the rocks that send water cascading
Down their face to build pools that cool my own,

That rise high with sunny and shaded surface

For either satisfaction.

The whirl I thought the wind

Turned out to be the stream,

Hidden beauty I never knew,

Blooming laurel I thought I’d missed,

Catawba flower alive past its season.

I walk to find that I am much more wrong.

Goodbyes that Precede Departure

Take off smoothly compared

To the unsettling emotions that fly at altitude;

Of what it means and what they meant,

The one who inspired a heart to such heights.

This plane will never land

In those flowing fields but it will find

A soft landing in a country that cares

Without visas and welcomes

With long runways, open gates.

Residue still obscures

The mind’s view in finding a way

To clean up feelings that were never to arrive alive.

As hazy as the windows are I yet look

Through hoping that this plane will land

Where its passenger will be received.