A few poems

inspired by winter. Or perhaps, then, "uninspired."

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When your head is a musket
and your hands are like mad smacks
children walk by
knowing that you're
bored with yourself,
although that's not
the precise inscription
flashing across their
la la little let's play
mode of understanding.

You are a Jimmy or
a Susie-round-the-corner
that grew up too soon,
wondering why, what
happened, and when did
this start.

The world now larger
than the yard,
the street.

And all now left
is the faint remembrance
of pudding sometimes
carefully packed for you
and the tiny plastic
spoon bringing it to your
la la lips.


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Winter has found
its way into
my plodding, desperate
mangle like a
jovial czar bringing
quiet oxen into
a previously unruly
crowded marketplace.

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I am dreamily chasing L.P.
through a mangled forest tall
trees shading sun
dark displacing bright -
and on occasion I catch a glimpse
of his flowing silver shawl and
careless backward glance
on this ancestral day
as we nearly evade
many slalom trunks
and mossy grabbing shrubs.

And in this slender scene
a dark woody bit
grows from ahead
as he has thrown
his legerdemain at trailing me.

I stop to peruse
the now still projectile -
it's merely a walnut
of grooved ridges and Y's
and my by-chance name
and haphazard head
within the surface psychology,
rocking tipped to slip
quick and still aslant
on the worn woolen trail.


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Fade away into childhood dreams
Memory isn't always how it seems
Wonder what the poet did
Reality is a pyramid