Pond Scene

Perching upon a branch
The great gray heron waits.
Water scurrying by
With schools of tiny fish
Who don't know it's above.

Flashes flutter beneath;
Silver silhouettes swim
Alongside little domes
That breach the surface line,
Raising curious heads
With colorful streaked sides—
Pond sliders peeking out.

Across the pond I see
A white party of birds.
In this wading group, one,
Skinny and statuesque,
Stands above all the rest.
A great white egret waits
As tiny ibises
Pick and poke through the grass;
And two diminutive
Snowy egrets play,
The one chasing his mate
Until she takes to flight,
Landing a couple feet
Away. He flies in suit,
Tracing upon the blue 
His little yellow pair
Of banana peel feet.

Overhead rose a cry
Like raspy guiro scrapes;
A long shadow appeared:
A great grey heron flies,
Attracting the branch-sat
One, engaging their wings
Toward the high treetops.
They circle in a pair
Once and a second time,
Then a third circuit make
Before they disappear
Within the woody heights.

There’s a hole that we know

There's a hole that we know and we want filled,
A dream that settles in the void like mist.
Somehow a cloudy rheum that distorts kissed
The comfort of a conquest we could build,
Lifetime endeavors of a heart unstilled
At the thought nothing it wants may exist
Behind that fog; there's only a clenched fist
And a flood of emotions overspilled.

Come twilight rainfall washes through the void.
Every idea is reduced into light,
Sound, senses, perceptions and paranoid 
Formulations for the brain to ignite
And cloud over again what we should see:
Not that it is there, but that it could be.

The Pond and its Birds

These birds that live on the banks of the pond
Are the reason we give thanks to the pond.

The muscovy ducks with their feather coats
Brass-green as the waters flanking the pond;

The poking beaks of the white ibises 
Who sometimes descend in ranks on the pond;

The tall, fluffy wood stork we wish to hug,
Who with lengthy gray beak shanks through the pond;

The cormorant who spreads its wings to dry
On the bridge's wooden planks at the pond;

The limpkin dappled with brown and white spots
Eating the mollusks it yanks from the pond;

The great white egret and grand herons gray
Who wade with their legs so lank through the pond;

And Lefty the mallard, though he can't fly,
His personality anchors the pond.

So prays the ♡ and W who trace
All that they love in this tranquillest pond.

Sib the sleeper has his bed

Sib the sleeper has his bed
Angled somewhere between the fanged
Grin of fantasy and a gang
Of phenomena with a godmasked head.
What enigmas of the past
Are symbolized by his dreams recast?

And what are the futures he observes
In parabolas of his slumber's curves?

Sonnet about you and ducklings

Another day with nothing to write about,
As usual my thoughts return to you.
Particularly when you and I crouched
Among the train of ducklings passing through. 
I can't describe the exhilaration 
When they huddle around your legs and mine,
Mobbing us with zero hesitation,
Cheekily playing with your shoelace twine.
I adore the gentle way you observe
These sacred offspring in their merriment;
The awe and affection duly deserved
For those precious puffs of life Heaven sent.
The love they show us makes my spirit soar,
And your love of them makes me love you more.

Just when you’re about to lay down to sleep

Just when you're about to lay down to sleep,
The world sounds a waking cacophony
Of morning business and monotony
Deep in the weeds of fatigue where you reap
What bitter rancors of exhaustion seep
Into the bedroom penal colony:
Two states that join in sick synonymy;
With rest bested, lonesome misery creeps.

Take heart and hold that pillow like it's me;
Know that my return with the evening comes.
Hold on and listen to the rain which drums
Softly on the roof, like the fingers we
Shall drum along each other's sides, this vow
Of eternal love in eternal now.

The world can be quite an imposing place

The world can be quite an imposing place:
Endlessly demanding conformity,
Always with a dark new enormity
To fatally threaten the human race.
Inventing novel lenses to retrace
A protean past of deformity
Molded for the current majority;
What does that look like on your only face?

The only thing we can do is be us.
Here, where death awaits individuals, 
We know our term, yet we only revere
Those who burn singly, even unto dust.
Let's live and love without hurting our peers,
Joining our own paths as originals.

4/20

Today is the day numbers consecrate.
Brothers and sisters rejoice and partake
In rites to render the soul less opaque.
For some a special day to contemplate
The wend of being and our modest fate.
Today is the numbered day I'll remake
Myself from a whisper, and I'll awake
From what normal perceptions obligate.

Further, higher, breaking the boundary
Between a unit and totality;
To go beyond the superficial fronts 
And realize we don't know reality
When our misconceptions start foundering.
What does that mean? I've smoked a few good blunts.

I don’t know how to prove I haven’t quit

I don't know how to prove I haven't quit
To you when my intentions haven't changed
And my aspirations are still arranged
The same as they'd been with no deficit.
I might say I've taken deliberate
Steps to become a little less estranged
From my poetry dreams, though not deranged
Enough to think I could be laureate.

My hope is to grow enough to produce
Something of substance you could interact
With, something which finds its harmonic use
Each time you supply your personal fact.
And you could rest assured I tell the truth:
I dream although the shape is inexact.

Sonnet

I don't know what to tell you in regards 
To your fears of our insignificance.
The ninety percent history discards 
May find us their latest participants,
And maybe that's because of impotence;
Some might ascribe it to a lack of luck,
Some to a society's reticence.
My own diffidence used to make me duck
The toil of evolution, now I'm stuck
To the shifty question of quality.
In spite of it all no one gives a fuck.
Must that condemn us to frivolity?
The spotlight doesn't cause a work to shine,
But one's dedication to their design.