Kindred Thoughts

Bent grass weeps beneath the weight of winter’s stride;
I am here, inside, nearly alone, thinking
thoughts aplenty.  It should be of no surprise
then, that some turn towards my Andover kin,
to my uncle and my aunt, for to arrest
considerations would ransom my reward.
Ideas that are as new as incandescence,
or perhaps ancient as the brontosaurus
peering out across tropical savanna. 

My thoughts dry cups and dishes edged in aqua,
and tie the worn out laces of brown Florsheims.
They frame the steaming locomotive bridged high
above lakeside lowlands where steel mills once stood;
they blanket the sky with a billowing smoke
for miles, they embrace the weathered, aging
docks that dot the placid bays where fishermen
set out with tackle and hardiness and hope. 

I think of Center Road, of rhododendrons
and the thorny rose, of an added oak deck
carefully built with skilled hands and canopied
against a blazing sun.  And I study in
hospitality, when the taste of a thick
steak plays symphonic melodies on taste buds.
Notions rain as if mountains do not exist,
as if a dream kneads muscles in a stiff neck. 

Those orange and scarlet flowers then burst to life
from fragile, white glass…a butterfly alights,
delicate, deliberate, with quivering
wings and beating heart.  It does not think, yet lives,
and is partaking of vast, ancient rhythms
coursing through us all.  It is to weep, to laugh,
it is to appreciate, it is to love.
For my Uncle and my Aunt, for both of you,
all my best hopes, all my best dreams, all my love.


34 Lines
(Form: Hendecasyllabic)
11 Rhythm
Writer’s Cramp Winner
4-28-20

Use: “orange”