More Writing

It has been a while since I posted anything here.  So, here I am again.  What follows are a few poems I've written lately.  I'll have a story to add next.

DULCINEA SMILES

I'm something less than I think I am

and likely more than I want to be.

A martyr to my future death, fearful

that it will take something from me

I shouldn't have been entrusted with,

something less valuable than I imagine.

I'm the crow, the raucous charlatan,

cawing its importance and presence

diverted by a sliver of silver foil

for which it drops the thistle seeds

from its grasping black beak

as it picks up the useless glitter.

I’m Don Quixote without Sancho,

but with a lance broken in youth

shattered when the east wind blows

and impotent in the eyes of Dulcinea.

I’m something less than I think I am

and likely more than I want to be.

NOVA

It was a slow burn,

smoldering unnoticed,

gathering energy

until it could absorb no more

and in the flare of an evening spark

it blew itself apart.

Soon there was nothing left

dying faster than it had once lived,

devoid of all that it had been

while what it could be

was forever gone, yet even now

I see what no longer exists.

LIFE OF A MAYFLY

The mayfly slides from its larval hull,

riding the current while wisp wings

dry in the moist air.  It waits to face

a two-hour life of sex and death. 

Rising from the surface film

it’s buoyed upwards by a lurking

trout who misses when it slurps

nudging the mayfly airborne.

I wonder if it feels that its life

lasts a lifetime, if seconds crawl

so it can relish each moment

of its brief and hectic existence,

a life of finding a larvae mate,

of driven sex that lasts for half

its hours so utterly draining

it slips unnoticed into nothingness.  

In a distant spinning dust cloud,

elements coalesce, a planet is born

and from that alien place

my life, my brief existence,

plays out so fast to seem that

it ends in the slurp of a trout.