Day 19: Memo to Mitt

FYI, I am available.
You will need a running mate
come convention time,
and you need to win Ohio.
I happen to be from Ohio.
It's a swing state. Pick me.

Like you, I have good hair.
I'm not a Mormon
but I've known several Mormons,
and they're very nice people.
How are you polling with the
Unitarian-Pagan-Buddhist-Taoist bloc?

Unlike you, I went to public schools
and a midwestern land-grant university.
My people are salt-of-the-earth
populist small-town working folk.
I drive a Ford and bake my own bread.
People will eat that up.

You and I were practically neighbors
in Michigan growing up in the sixties
when your Dad was governor.
I didn't go to Cranbrook.
I went to Groves down the road.
We go way back.

You want the suburban Mom vote?
My wife teaches yoga in Westerville,
and she's worked all her life, unlike some.
We both have values, just different ones.
We're so different, yet we're alike.
Kind of like America.

Day 18: I read the news today oh boy

eye-catching yet critical reporting
the leed has to get your attention
and try to keep it with a promise
that vaguely works as a premise
in a slightly flattering voice
that's just a bit unsettling
while reassuring readers
because they're so hip
they will know better
than the other crowd
in the vernacular
with just enough
intellectually
pretentious
buzz words
to spice
it up
sold
out
#

Day 17: Detour

Spring evenings are made for riding
through twelve distinct neighborhoods
past five libraries, through seven parks,
across two creeks, past one lake and
one internationally important wetland.

But the trail ends where they're building
the new Dodridge Street bridge,
so I turned around and came back,
retracing the same path in later light
like Heraclitus stepping in the same river.

Halfway home my phone rang,
and I talked to Greg for a couple of miles,
delighted that he's healed after surgery,
an unexpected pleasure and receptive ear
for my own sudden course correction.

Day 16: Just a little bit lost

While riding my bike to the barbershop,
the bank, the liquor store, and home
on an otherwise ordinary Saturday,
a fellow cyclist but more serious than me,
judging by the shoes, the shorts, and the shirt,
asked me for directions to the bike trail turnoff
up Schrock Road and north through Westerville.
Miles later, a father and son in an SUV,
probably looking for South High School,
asked me for directions to Otterbein Street.
I think you might be mistaking me for
someone who knows his way around.

Day 15: Mom's haiku

Like God, if coffee
didn't exist, someone would
have to invent it.

Poetry month: Say what? (Day 14)

I scream
for people to make better choices about their own health
to scale back in their gross domestic consumption
to eat real food
to go outside and play
to plant a tree for every tank of gas
for bike lanes and libraries in every neighborhood
for one big coop (with a gym).

You scream
for lower taxes and less regulation of businesses
victory in the zero-sum competition for scarce resources
more fast food
bigger toys
more spectacular shows
rules that are clear and punishments severe
for one big going-out-of-business sale.

We all scream
for love
respect
a job well done
a hot meal
a cool beverage
a good night's sleep
someone to talk to who gets it.

It's national poetry month; I'm doing the best I can (Day 13)

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

Wednesday evening just before sunset
Halfway home from a bike ride to Galena
North against the wind up Old 3C
Then south with the wind at my back,

Big hawk with wingspan greater than mine
Barreling at me low over the bike trail
Swoops up and over my outstretched arm
Raised in salute or wave or high five.

Naporimo day twelve: Greetings from the Cliche Liberation Front!

Thinking outside the box entails
first thinking inside the box,
which requires a box,
which means finding, inheriting, or hunting down,
capturing, domesticating, and ultimately
inhabiting your own special box.
Congratulations on your box!

The great unboxed, however, must cobble
together from scratch, from the streets,
from scraps, that is, from available materials
their own original self-made box.
Call it Independent Study.
The shape of the box might be a bit
irregular, nonstandard, or unaccredited,

So the untrained, unchurched, uninitiated
members of no fraternity, sorority, or order,
no priesthood, profession, or secret society
must create or concoct their own theology,
user guide, loyalty oath, pledge of allegiance,
mission statement, credo, or code of conduct.
Necessity really is the mother of invention.

The educated, by virtue of their access
to the body of knowledge
(hint: it comes in a box)
are thereby anointed, credentialed, degreed,
confirmed, ensconced,and ordained
as members of the club,
as decreed by the gatekeeper.

Then comes the fun part: the lucky few
secure in boxes with benefits attached
have the whole curriculum to overcome.
Whether they join the true believers
or take their box with a grain of salt,
they can learn to play the game,
play hard, play fair, play to win.

Getting better at anything involves,
like chicken and egg,
learning the rules,
respecting the tools,
acquiring the skills, the grammar and usage,
the language of the craft,
if only to know what to throw away.

Naporimo day eleven

We'reallconnected

Momandad keep busy
upgrading theirhouse
offloading possessions
maintaining their health
waiting for an apartment
to be vacant so they can movein.

Scottandawn will try to visit
Momandad soon and help
keepup the yard
sort the things to takealong
perhaps bringback something
they want to give up.

Abeandzoe are doing fine
with workandschool
their manyfriends
and their cats
in their ownapartments
in their owntimeframe.

Annandfred, Jeanandbarney, Peteandcindy, Maryjo
have youngadultchildren too
in schoolandwork
some with kidsoftheirown
with housestomaintain
property to divest

allintransition.

Naporimo day ten

Tsunami alert

Chennai office closed
by Sumatra earthquake
will post pages tomorrow

Napowrimo Day Nine

What is a poem?

Is it the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling
while taking a step to the right or left
to find a place of balance here and now,
to test the ground and have a leg to stand on?

Is it left brain sifting particles of data
and right brain riding the wave of the moment
in a cryptic dialog navigating through shadows
toward safe transport to somewhere else?

Is it a symbiosis of equal and opposites,
part making and part beholding,
both push and pull, gather and spread,
like cooking and eating or traveling and being there?

Is it instrumental, therapeutic, and useful,
a way to live with disappointment and heartache,
or is it autotelic, ecstatic, pointless, and sweet,
neither this nor that? Clearly not this.

NaPoWriMo Day Eight

Potato pancake, lip smack, newsprint's rustle, coffee's rush,
the angle of the sunshine in the Sunday morning kitchen.
Eventually the creeping phlox migrates from west to east
along a narrow bed on the other side of the fence.
Bake bread, cook a pot of black bean soup, have a banana.
One-handing a spade, weed a strawberry bed before it rains.
Shake off boots, stretch out on the floor, the day's too short.
Broiled salmon, roasted sweet potatoes, asparagus, and wine.