3 little words

to Carolin

As I think of how much I can
communicate with my darling
Reggie, our Maine Coon cat,
I realize the going limit’s
just about 3 little words:
Reggie, Water, Out, exactly
the packet-limit I get from you.
“Yes, it is” you say, amused.

(22 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Damming The River Of Time

Damming The River Of Time

In this issue of The New York Review
a picture of the Ku Klux Klan parading,
September, Nineteen  Twenty-six, filling
the avenue, capital dome for background,
lots of American flags were fluttering.
I was seven months old so don’t blame me.

Yesterday, March 22, Two Thousand-ten,
at the capital protesting the health reform bill,
men shouted “nigger” at a black congressman
and spat on another. Someone it seems
has dammed up the river of time again.

It’s harder to recognize the Klan in jeans
or leisure suits. The heart of their protest may
still be the color of their president’s skin.

- Dr. Robert M. Chute (PhD, Johns Hopkins, Parasitology)
 Poland Springs ME 

This Medical Day

is Doom’s Day, according
to Glenn Beck & others, the
end of Life as they know it,
an insult to God & Man. To
nuns who work in hospitals,
it brings a new medical era
of closeness to the living &
dying, offering even more
help & hope to the needful,
despite ideologues’ raving.
Here, the nuns say, take our
hands, we offer you help,
not cascading hysterics.

(20 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

On St. Patrick's Day

As a child, I wore a delicate
little wire shamrock on my lapel,
webbed with fine green threads;
as a teen, I pled my green eyes.
At a karaoke session last nite,
I sang “The Minstrel Boy (Lad)”
half-well, but only an Irishman
sitting a few tables away knew;
amazed, others congratulated me.


(17 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v1

Open experiences

The more I get out & about as a post-operative who’s recently had 2 knees replaced & a heart stented, the more I’m beginning to realize the beauty of what I've often called “adequacy” in daily life & on the web - which is (as far as we see it, now) infinite, while daily life is finite, or the reverse; both are open experiences (as meaningful the 2nd-time as the 1st, the 3rd time as the 2nd, etc.) Reducing either to individually exquisite acts is limiting it. What if its continuity (extension) is part of its actual virtue? Ponder this while you continue to live it. I am, smiling as I edit this.

In a warm place

for Carolin


Just before you died, I asked you
where you wanted to be born again;

“In a warm place,” you told me, so
any warm place I see on the web
I think of us as visiting, together,

as we did Bonaire, then norCal,
where I still live, thinking this.

(02 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

After CHENEY fell

After CHENEY fell,
he rose again on the 3rd-day
& shuffled to the windows,
beholding the fed.District
laid out before him:

“I have finally conquered
this & all that this controls;
I only have to raise my hand…”

& stopped mid-sentence, his
crooked grin straightening,
& leant on the windowsill,
remembering his heart or
what was once his heart.

(01 MAR 10, Santa Clara CA) v2