Books

I’m jealous of my books

Sitting over there

So smugly on their shelves

Complete, closed

Finished years ago.

Almost all their authors

Have moved on

Untouchable now

And all I have left

Are these reminders

Lined up side by side

Shoulder to shoulder

Settled in

Knowing their place

In my small world

And that bigger

Outside world where

People know them

Glad to see them

Hold them, read them

Sometimes I dust them

Tend to them as their keeper

Their clumsy, quiet keeper

Who has discovered

His place and is now

Jealous of theirs.

         Cold War

These days it’s easy to miss

and even reminisce fondly

about the Cold War –

the coldness of it,

the threats of it,

the simple sides –

one world power

vs. the only other.

Back then it seemed

like there were only two,

and the rest,

the non-world power countries

sat back waiting, watching,

anticipating outcomes.

We imagined spies

and checkpoints,

missiles pointing

this way and that.

We listened to speeches,

the good guys and the bad,

understood the easy equation

of mutual destruction,

measured the future

in terms of numbers

and then sizes of weapons.

Those were simpler times,

checkers instead of chess,

a simple plot scheme,

cowboys and Indians,

just children at play

as opposed to today.

           Haiku

It’s hard to get a haiku

to happen.

First of all, we must

adjust our thinking,

get big ideas in small spaces

a small upstairs room

instead of crowded

street scenes,

more Dickinson

than Whitman.

Then we get to count

three lines

and words viewed

in their pieces –

syllable count

oh, syllable count.

We get to see them

in a different light

broken down

into the parts we rarely

remember.

And the haiku needs

an image to play on

and a speaker we trust

to lead us through

the lines, the words

and the brief moment

we give over

to its take of the small

world we share.