A wheeling hawk
searches the ground for rodents daring
the afternoon. He folds his wings
and falls to strike some hapless mouse.
You, for whom I sang my songs,
have left me in an empty house.
Dusty Dragon
My dragon's wings are gray with dust.
I have not flown him since you left.
I've left the warrior dwarves to rust
I do not dance with unicorns
amid the eucalyptus. I craft
no tales of mice with hunting horns
nor sing wild songs of elves at sea
on dolphin steeds. There's no one here
to listen. The summer meadow burns
with golden fire for none but me,
and, left alone, I no longer care.
I ought to get a box to pack
these relics away, but if I store
these things, I admit you won't be back.
The Missing Queen
The fog has come silent in the night
and made the eucalyptus groves
green islands set in mock seas white
with waters the coast could not confine.
I look for castles among the leaves,
or sail of sloop or barquentine
in the foggy ocean. Unicorns
should prance along this shore
to greet a disembarking queen
robed in rubies. Their golden horns
should honor-cross above her hair.
There are no castles. The gray fog pales.
There is no queen. You are not here.
The cows beg for their morning bales.
Your Call
You called today to set conditions
for splitting things we own. Your voice
hummed like wire tightened with tension.
We spoke with exaggerated care,
playing at strangers being nice
above the angry hurts we bear.
I weary of dividing things
that once meant happy memories
of times we had. I want no more
of balance sheets of rights and wrongs
reduced to dollars, deeds, and keys.
I want us talking in the grove
about the dragonflies the bees
have tamed as the air guard for their hive.
Etiquette
If I should meet you some time to come,
what should I do? What should I say?
Smile and nod, or leave the room?
Pretend we never knew each other?
Or stand till you have run away?
Or am I wasting worry and bother
on something unlikely to occur?
Now we'll walk on different streets,
go to places strangers gather,
and divide the friends we had before.
You take the days, I'll take the nights,
or summer's yours and winter's mine,
or some arrangement that fairly splits
our ways in halves that never join.
Day Breaks
A distant cow calls for a bull.
The day breaks gray over the grove.
Taped boxes wait along the wall.
I drink my tea and clean the cup.
My life is almost ready to move.
I close the last box, wrap it with tape,
and stack it with the rest. I check
for things I've overlooked. Just day
and dust in the corners, not one scrap
of us, just me in the waiting stack.
The climbing sun brightens the sky.
I hear the movers park the van
on the drive. I push my past away,
open the door, and let them in.
In My Dreams
Sometimes your face shows in my dreams.
I glimpse you acting in the back,
an extra in a movie who comes
on camera in the party scene
or multiplies the crowd at a wake.
Aging starlet, who once was queen
of my center screen, why harass me?
I've made my life in other places.
My sound track plays another tune;
our waltz is only memory.
When you appear among the faces
you wrench my dream from its destined flow.
I wake and wonder what psychic distresses
come from dreams that are twisted so.
Postscript
When I loved you I saw the world
through fogs gilded by the moon.
From chimney smoke I'd make a herald,
from clucking hens a parliament,
from buzzards aging courtesans,
from clouds a camp of warrior tents,
from bleating sheep and lowing cows
the battle noise of jousting knights
clashing lances in tournaments
fought to win a single rose.
Even in Arthur's Camelot
the sun one morning rose to find
the towers tumbled, weeds taking root
and roofless halls filling with sand.
About me:
Thank you for reading these poems. If you have got this far, you know I was married once upon a time, and then I wasn't. I haven't repeated the experience. I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I live now in Brentwood, California. I live alone, since my dog died. Soon I may be adopted by another dog. Or, perhaps, a cat? If you'd like to read some of my other poems, go to https://www.rikjorj.com. There are some short prose works there, as well.
Prosodic note for the few inclined to have such information:
These poems are iambic tetrameter quatorzains rhyming abacbcdefdegfg.
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