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OAK TREES
They cling to their dry crackly hopes and misplaced modesty:
Leaves that will not fall.
They endeavor to create an illusion of solidity and sempiternal life
Yet they simply transmit a message of never letting go.
Whether that is good or bad
I will never know.
Norman, Oklahoma
March 7, 2020
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CATTLE ON A HILL
They are eating the tough dry grass of winter.
It fills their mouths but perhaps not their minds
except to remind them what it does not have:
stick-to-the-ribs grains and blossoming flowers.
And on a beige carpet
Jackson Pollock working with weeds, not paint:
dribbles of cocklebur, butterfly milkweed, hoary alyssum
and a poke sallet banner bending in the wind --
Hail, Spring!
The greening of the fields
makes my heart beat fast with joy
but I must remember –
the first greens are always the most deadly.
March 6, 2020
Norman, OK
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BRADFORD PEARS
The first few days of March
come and go
in a whirlwind of the mind
when nothing seems to stick
to the bare trees of memory
until overnight white and curiously odorous
flower clouds fly up
punctuate the wordless
timidly deciduous trees
so that the idea of a message
with its contradictions of beauty
and a noxious scent
sends a message of reality
rather than idealizing gazes
March 7, 2020
Norman, OK
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| Bradford Pear Trees in Oklahoma |
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THE WAGES OF LIFE
Cedars burned by a prairie fire
two or three years now gone by now
half-naked skeletons
draped in scorched rags
their ash quaffed by the wind
somewhere between
desire and fear
march 7, 2020
norman, oklahoma
****************************
WE, THE SHEEP
A field of sheep
A field of sleep
Those odd, square-shaped ponds
Storing oil pumped from shallow wells
The oil field below rumbling into a gusher
Men covered in mud and sweat
Those were the days
Oh yes, they were
Joy and infinite potential
Long before we knew –
a lake of oil
a lake of pain
From the highway, I see
nubbins of wool
knobs of cedars
and a field
drifting off to sleep
March 7, 2020
Norman, Oklahoma
