Rules race west and east,
north and south, framing panes
of white, green and red,
light blue and orange
(jackpot!).
One lone finger scrambles
the letters, dragging them to
the colors to stockpile
the numbers before you can
(bingo!).
If I tap the teacher and see
his upended headstone
teeth, his square face swallowed
by a psychotic grin, I’m a rock star
(word star!).
But if my best guess is met
with a self-righteous smirk,
I brace myself for the crush
of the coulda,
shoulda,
woulda
(damn!).
A napping cat, cat-napped,
wrenched roughly from its sunny
back-porch slumber to sate the mid-day
munchies of a sandy, panting alpha male.
At my feet, on the end of a drooping
leash, lies my own softly snoring
four-legged friend and I wonder
how the wild and the tame
met in this chessboard of cool
white condos and golf-course greens.
Did he catch her scent on the breeze
as he patrolled the fourteenth hole?
Or did he wait, sheltered
in that shady stand of silent pines
guarding kitty’s sleepy haven?
Was he stealthy and smooth
as he crept in closer? Or did he launch
himself with a howl, a lawn dart
with an appetite? Lucky kitty
never woke from her furry,
toy-chasing, string-swatting,
Sunday dreams. She never knew
what bit her.
A sestina.
A humid puff of storm tunes the August air
that droops, limp and sluggish, at my feet,
tapping my bare arms with its first drops.
A green and yellow beast chews the grass,
bearing on its metal back a bony man.
They lurch across the lawn with a grumble.
I watch until I hear the throaty grumble
of a pot-bellied cloud crowding the air.
I turn my back on the lawn-mowing man,
and escape upstairs to dry my feet
and watch the wind tangle the grass
through a window pimpled with fat rain drops.
The stuttering breeze crescendos and drops,
backing a duet of shouts and grumbles.
Two figures feuding in the glossy grass,
arms chopping erratically at the air,
like conductors too long on their feet.
The bony fist flails at a ham-colored man.
“Yer outta yer mind!” rails the bony man
who flips a finger skyward, strewing drops.
Hammy shifts and shuffles weary feet
and answers Bony with a sullen grumble.
Their glum concerto sags in the soggy air
and slips earthward, lost in the grass.
Bony spits tobacco in the grass
and jabs his finger at the pink-faced man
who shakes his head with a stubborn air.
A shower of sharp staccato drops
chase the thunder’s bass-drum grumble,
and gather, babbling, around their feet.
The palm trees tremble from tops to feet,
shedding fronds like feathers in the grass.
The men resign their squabble with a grumble,
reluctant still to be the bigger man.
They duck toward shelter, dodging drops
as thunder cannonades the hushing air.
A final, fading grumble clears the air
and wrings some trailing drops into the grass.
A man laughs somewhere beneath my feet.
