feeling under the weather, a bit

and here is yet another poem for ya'all - from 1995 - same old song and dance - unsolicited - thus unpublished.

vacation continues. really feeling under the weather today. tired, aches and pains and a headache that won't go away. i am certain it's withdrawal symptoms from being away from the paper machine for 6 days. no other explanation works.

other than that - not much going on. really warm (OK, it's HOT) again today. certainly can tell it's summertime in the olde Willamette Valley. that should please the sun lovers ....


SONG OF REJECTION

all my stamps gone
what does it matter? no one was publishing dreams of darkness this year anyway.

i sit beside the muddy river & wonder how anything could live in those dark waters.
lovers stroll by, arm in arm. she is beautiful. he is masculine.
they are giddy & skip stones across slow eddies.
(just like god hurling thunderbolts upon a drenched Midwest.)

i listen to the wind through fallen timber.
squirrels wait for hand-outs. i give them instead pages of poems no one wanted.
they too refuse to be impressed & leave for easier scores.
the old man with an eagle on his hat shares stale pop-corn.
in the sky, an osprey - but it could have been a vulture - searches for also dinner.

when the rain finally accompanies darkness, i watch neon bleed.
somewhere in the blurred faces that flash between head-lamps are dreams & love & poems.
but i do not capture them. instead i listen to the rain as it whispers in a language i try desperately to translate
unsuccessfully tonight.

what does it matter? all my stamps are gone!