Gordon’s Airplane
for Gordon Jones (and Dante Cassius)

Empty gas tank
Rusting fuselage
Waiting at the airport

Man without a job
Sleeping in his van
yet wearing aviator glasses

In this era
of unbalanced budgets
cascading markets
and rampant foreclosure

it is good to feel
a bit of fancy
the last of whimsy
extra space for a dream

to know Gordon’s private plane
still rests in the hangar.

Harmony with Nature

My father walks in from the yard
old jeans stained with mud
sees me playing Farmville

clicking water into the tomato patch
digging up pixels
and typing in fertilizer

he asks me to come pull Bermuda grass
out of the broccoli

‘Gardens come in 3-D, you know.’

Wise Construction

after failure
I asked the inmost me
why do I act so unlike myself?

How could I have hurt those I loved
and placed others in danger?

How to unlink the chains
and reposition the pathway stones
that looked right at the start
but veered off course?

How to start again now?

clean my hands by building with them
new structures on fresh ground
better a solid house than a flimsy castle

let myself be challenged
pick apart and purify motivations

Stay under budget, allot enough time
for my inner work crew

to choose healthy materials
and functional tools
not paint over wood rotten from the inside

and follow the guidebook
for original, but safe, construction.

Cristina Deptula is a writer from San Leandro, California. She can be reached at cedeptula@sbcglobal.net.