Elephant corral

  I

Sitar sounds & rhythmic drumming prepare the way for 

words of Rumi and my thoughts to run

Back in the day of simple street names, park, north park, 

the stream was put into a culvert and allowed to run

The power substation is setback from the houses, utility poles, 

and towers hold the lines up high for the electricity to run

The ballfields are not far from the combo basketball & hockey court 

near the playground where the kiddos are able to safely run

Green dots mark the progress of cleaning the catch basins 

to ensure the storm water can freely run

Brick chimney on one side of the roof peak, newer galvanized 

pipe on the other, allows the exhaust to run

   II

The sign tells folks to "be the reason for someone to smile today", 

you make me smile everyday I get up to run

Walking along the gutter, or taking a shower, both times 

create the space to allow my thoughts to run

I resist the urge to fix their mailbox which was clearly smashed 

by someone with a baseball bat on the run

Until we corral the unspoken elephant in the room, 

multiple cries for overdue justice will continue to run

Trouble is, will the corral be big enough, the cries for justice tend 

to be drowned out by the truthsplaining ads that run

We must take action to corral the elephants, shout through the ads, 

restore justice and order by catching those on the run

Searches return what has been asked for, that is what they are designed to do, hence the context, and the text strings used, are key for proper results to run

Valentine's Day 2023

  I

Writing is a challenge, you need to capture that thought, before 

something else comes along and the idea runs

The Town doesn't own the bridge, the T does, because 

the train to Boston underneath it runs

The natural depression forms a grassy bowl among 

the houses to collect the storm water when it runs

The sprawling red brick mill complex is as important to this 

area as the tangled wooded vines along the stream that runs

The yellow rectangle on the utility pole is meant to guide 

your drive along the safe side of the road that runs

A walk among the streets, and byways of this town, helps put 

my thoughts together to say how long my love for you runs

  II

For breakfast, a once-over-easy egg is my favorite, the 

whites get solid, yet the yolk is allowed to run

Sisters of St Mary taught me in elementary school and in 

high school, Christian Brothers guided me to run 

A minor defect in my foot has me now walking 

many more miles daily than I used to run

You can see the light of the approaching train before 

the whistle blows alerting all that it is making a run

My joy rises as the red-tailed hawk follows the updraft

it too is searching for food to run

In the warmth of today's bright sun, you walk 

my side, while our shadows together run 

For DS

2/13/23

Ghazal: rough sleepers

I learned to consider both the upstream and downstream work as part of the process to understand what was being done in front of me

During my commute to Boston, de-training at South Station, walking into the Financial District, I found the rough sleepers in front of me

What approach does one take to write a poem to send to Europa, is their water like the tap water in front of me?

A melody can transport me back in time to a place, a point, usually significant for what was happening in front of me

The sounds of the street, traffic, voices, a symphony of life, even if a hard life, always for the rough sleepers in front of me

What will Europa make of the poem which will come to it, or will it be treated like the rough sleepers in front of me 

Ghazal: trial balloon

The heat seemed to stop on what was the coldest 

day of the year, or ever, who's counting, 

And how do we figure out this human interface 

The thermostat has only 2 wires, White 1 and Red heat, to

Complete the circuit, yet the battery wasn't charging 

It should have be easy to make sense of the human interface

In the old days, you put logs on the fire and as the logs 

burned down, you added more, later it was coal, or gas, 

or oil, the flickering flame provided the human interface

The Nest has its own mind, located somewhere up in the cloud, 

the workers remote, diligent, but unreachable in this new 

hybrid world with a cryptic human interface 

The simpler device comes back from storage, gets wired,

Time set again, and programed for generating heat while

Suspicious minds work out the human interface 

Turns out the balloon has flown before, a few times, with

many not knowing of it; this time, it came down with a shot

We need to take back the human interface