When mother came to town

After the leaf filled pool had drained
there was still the linger of her smile
for the rotund boy attempting to sun
in a day of intermittent showers that

threatened to ruin her coif into damp
grey curls redolent of Grecian ruins.
He was a gladiator once, pride of her
loins, conquering all that she loathed.

Now her blue deck shoes curl and she's
chilled in the shadow of a low arc'd sun.

When she moved in feline grace, the mind
only thought of nails, orange came normal 
against the brown drift of floating leaves.

One Purple Iris

Blah blah would be a cogent way to blah
but whose mind doesn't tire of it all the time.

But I heard something about a mud bubble
which mattered greatly. The mud swallowed
everything. And it splattered everything too.

To crawl out into the warmth was to view
a miniature purple iris opening at dawn.

The mud swallowed everything but a crawl
out mattered. A dewy iris purple in the sun

was all.

Sometimes in Autumn

Iconic in the autumn breeze, 
she smirks before the train. 

If another leaf falls, 
a rake would come in handy:

good gloves on the handle 
might protect the tender skin.

All the Faces Shaded by Evening Maples

Checkered blue curtains undulate in the light spring
breeze, carrying twilight kickball screams sore from
macadam shins skinned up to a second floor screen,
taunting the feverish in close quarantine whose rashy
grasp implores but cannot hold a tiny pine that stays
deep with inchoate needles pale green and yellow in a
hidden hole drilled some days past under swirled teal
tile pried loose where the glue was hastily misapplied.
The brown scab innocence within its safe grey circle
is absent-mindlessly flicked. A pale sharp half-moon,
it surprises with a red eruption right before bedtime.

Somersaults

Little flowered dress will not go round off
where bare soles find solace in pale blades
of green. Gospel scales under the umbrage
of prior hammered drums still soar despite

the drifting solar influence. If clouds bluing
had souls, and maybe they do, then drifting
would be this innocence. 

Something I forgot to say

A check from the ice and snow covered north
signed in purple ink that I cannot in faith sign
arrives into the temperate zone of my palms
waved in a slight northern invasion of sunlight.

Once, in the freezing rain, with breath expired
in an aspiration of slippery delight, I closed the 
shiny door of an emerald car, mirrors befogged
in anticipation of a warm slide into icy blackness.

That icy blackness never happened despite the
false certainty that grows in winter that spring
will never erupt in green shoots from the black.
A wee leek curled in slumber can be coldly cruel.

Now, the winnings from another life unwrapped
scream from a previous scratch that left little
crumbies on the quarter and the oak marbled
table, marbles gone but the crumbies remain.

Let's call it square

So much happens in the window within a window
when you believe in glass and northern pine frame
rectangles for the view. Look away if you can start
to see the curliecues of paint painted long enough
ago to white curl in the autumn mist. Outside, the
maples turn so fast from green to red and orange 
that the frame cannot be frozen even if your own
breath was misting so. White frames be lying too.