Africa, India and Asia too
leopards can be seen out in the blue
scary up close, these spotted cats
a threat to small voles, mice and rats
on three continents these big cats are seen
if they are hungry, they can be mean
the females are the ferocious ones
their big teeth gleaming in the sun
scared of cats, dogs, frogs, voles, mice, snakes,
baby elephant jumped into a tree and held on
vastly amusing the little creatures
who had power over almost no one else
his role in life set
Red Oak menstruates in the heat of summer
Beech and maples stand back from her labor
Moonlight lifts her skirt
Wind drifts through her leaves
She stomps in circles only the owls divine
Piper of voles
She checks the many holes up and down her body
Shivers
An ancient skin crawling with leafhoppers and katydids
Pinches herself of replications
Like a plate glass window shattered from above
She rains green acorns
Thousands of bitter thumbtacks dropped to the forest floor
Seeds claw to their tiny graves
How they cry night and day
During a month of rain sun and the twist of Earth’s belly!
Mother! Mother!
Until
More than enough
For a feast of all the creatures
The remaining settle
Stars
Born from the mud and sky of colliding galaxies
Woman and God.
within a pock, a lonely copse
a one-time proudly standing duke
lay collapsed a pearly corpse
strewn, now stretched across a dyke
no mortar, stone or brick to budge
a single chain links an area
no sleeves rolled blueprint for this bridge
it’s not as grand as Knaresborough
growing moss along its course
this felted dew-born viaduct
where mice, voles and squirrels cross
the span, the trickle of a brook
wind savage sword angrily killed the ogre
leaving a gnarled, lost and forgotten auger
The hallowed hollow tree in October was excruciatingly alive.
There were apartments that numbered more than twenty-five.
There were owls and squirrels, rabbits, voles, and moles too.
Dressed in Halloween garb, challenging each duo to a boo.
Elaborate costumes were put on the young and the old.
Some were dressed subtly, others outrageously bold.
Dancing and partying went on in the hallowed tree tonight.
The tree was as happy as it had ever been on an October night.
The forest was usually clean of dangers, but today was different.
White stag sensed a new evil in the oaks to the east. He ran to see.
There was a predator there, a violator whom he had never sensed.
Others were in hiding now; moles, voles, rabbits and chipmunks.
Fall squirrels had stopped gathering acorns. They were in tree nests.
High off the forest floor, trembling, scared into submission.
White stag felt their terror, and it made him determined and upset.
It was a man, worse than a hunter, a predator of the worst sort.
Young girl child was lying on the ground motionless.
Devil human had killed her. He was digging a grave.
White stag rushed him, surprising him in the best way.
The violator fled, leaving the young child behind.
She opened her eyes and stared at White Stag.
She asked for her mommy.
I will take you home, he reassured her.
He did, for he was as magical as creatures ever become.
White stag was her power animal.
After bringing her back to life, would taking her home be a big deal?
It’s a carnival moon, the goose reported.
We ran out of our cozy houses to see for ourselves.
It looks like a common ordinary moon a rabbit said.
Two voles agreed; no imagination I guess.
I see it! I reported, and it is marvelous!
The mice argued that they could not see it.
Wait! A tiny mouse said. Yes, maybe I see a face.
Suddenly all of the animals saw a face.
But do you see a carnival face? I asked.
I see the carnival face! the goose reported.
The rest of them began fighting and biting.
Some could see the carnival face, others could not.
The goose and I had a laugh about this later.
He speaks for the uprooted.
A man of sorts, a twiggy Buddha.
He who interprets
the conferences of frogs,
the unpublished works
of kestrels and voles.
He’s an advocate for the underbelly
of a microbial heaven, for every kind
of uncouth animalcule.
Ancient is he, yet as fresh as tomorrow,
in green ponds he fishes for sunlight.
He plumps grassy pillows,
quilts nests for the slumbering and slippery,
gardens all the dewy meadows.
He speaks for the bulldozed,
the displaced. The native and
the nomadic.
He sweeps the muddy tracks
of iron caterpillars.
Bears tell him
of how things are going
in the suburbs,
in swimming pools and trash cans,
There must be a treaty.
Kits and coyote love him,
whistle-Pigs trumpet his approach.
Ducks quack his many sermons,
may shotguns always misfire.
He is a preacher,
a teacher to tic and turtle,
a bosky fellow, not a straw man,
or a hollow but verdant,
a green man for me and thee
harken now to his leafy lingo
for tomorrow he may be only a scarecrow
in a long ravaged field.
As a child he discovered
how to assimilate, merge and verge.
His five senses did not become six,
but a number closer to one.
That day, water drooled over mossy stones.
He smelled the splash of foaming atoms,
the explosive opening of water-buds.
He thought to himself:
'I can paint my mind
over the sky as if it were a cave wall.'
A swan rose up, wings clattering,
water ligaments pulling a wingspan
through a Catherine Wheel of sound.
His senses flew together
forming clumps of reality
which seemed to him to be new planets,
realities thrown from the minds of
angelic water voles and frogs.
He thought:
'If I place myself into these little worlds
I can leave my footprints
on running water, or on the air
as if I were a bird created
by the light of a foreign sun.'
Charming Ghost did not want to leave, so he stayed to play.
He got older and bigger and was alone at the end of each day.
His relatives all died, and left him behind, not knowing he was here.
Charming Ghost did not know to go into the light, I do fear.
Go into the light! His grandmother Ghost said from beyond the veil.
He heard her, but did not heed her, stuck around to shake and wail.
The people in the house thought he was their imagination at night.
They did not open up their hearts to him; they were not very bright.
Gargoyles and goblins moved to the white porch of the house.
They scared the tiny rat-like creatures voles, moles, rabbits and mice.
The garden was intact, no one bothered it at all thanks to their help.
They stayed out there and ate up everything from tomatoes to kelp.
One day a fine woman with a four-year-old son moved to this home.
He was in tune with spiritual beings, for he was a reincarnated gnome.
He encouraged Charming Ghost to take a faith leap into the light.
It was the last time the house was haunted, it was last Tuesday night.
There is a tool box on my desk and it is full of good stuff
Scissors, masks, paper clips, cocoa mix, tree pencils so rough
Were I always run to and look first, my go-to-find-something place.
I would not be surprised to see green chickens from outer space.
Like the junk drawers we have at home my husband once said.
He chuckled too making fun of me, so he is lucky he is not dead.
I have another stash in the cupboard, something out of my house.
I can hear something in there chewing, I suppose it is a big mouse.
Rats may come too bringing raccoons and other wild kin.
I can see them hanging from my neck, biting me on the chin.
Vermin and voles will come to me in no particular order or way.
I am a pied piper of rodents, they find me simple and gay.
How to catch the moles, voles and rats?
I am pondering my moves, as the king of the cats.
I am the magnificent, the best, the eager smart king.
They will be amazed at my stamina, stealth, spryness and spring.
I am lying on my couch, enjoying the pondering in all ways.
It is one of those lazy, summer, August fine days.
Which ones to catch first? Do I toy with them too?
I am lying in repose, thinking of catching at least two.
The squirrels and rabbits will be scattering fast.
I am the king of the hunt, all lying around moments are past.
I raise my giant paws up and give a yawn that starts everything.
In a few seconds the wildlife knows why I am the king,
SWISS CHEESE
The major connoisseurs of swiss cheese
as incredible as it may seem,
are not the Swiss basement rats.,
are the "voles" from the underground of the
politics....
THINKING OF BEING HAPPY
Just thinking of being happy, our hurried
friend tied the sorrows at the foot of the table,
he took a nap on the riverbed, and when
he woke up ... put his foot in the jackfruit, put
a jacket and went to party in heaven
mouth of the street ...
POLLUTION
The noise pollution is so intense,
the sound volume is so loud that
soon, soon, soon, soon there will be
queues of patients wanting to do
ear transplant ...
WEDDING
Marriage goes through several phases until
that comes to ending ... or not ...:
Initially marriage is a love movie.
Already at home living in two, it's drama ...
In the separation, it doesn't matter who is guilty,
it's either a comedy, or a horror movie ...!
Shark is aptly named.
A neighborhood terror if we had a neighborhood.
But we live in the country, so he only frightens wildlife.
Which saves me from phone calls from indignant neighbors.
Shark has a kill room.
We did not know it until the summer time.
It is a heated box the size of a baby coffin.
We keep it outside for him on cold days when he insists on being out there.
He uses it too.
We thought he went in the cat door and was cozy in there.
We discovered in the summer that this is where he drags his kills.
I will not gross you out with the details.
We found skeletons and or carcasses of birds, moles, voles, rats, and snakes in there.
I will not disgust you by telling you what alerted us in the summer time when things thawed.
But let’s just say Shark, the mighty hunter, is aptly named.
Transports of hereafter
pass one leaf to unclasped heaps.
Flirty winds rearrange the hedgerow plumage,
wisp in gentle whispers.
Chipping sparrows play hid and seek
with a watery sunlight.
Business is flourishing for the snuffling groundhog.
It’s the narrow part of the day,
a shoaling light ripples where squirrels dart.
A Blue Jay raps his usual rib-digging oldie.
Felicity flutters the loose and drifting:
the soft green carousels of evening,
the pirouette and circumvolve promenading.
Leaf bundles are ransacked by delving voles
but gently.
Seeing all this
I paint the hedgerow again with this eventide wash,
watch it all spun into dusk
from these owl bright eyes.
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