Summertime Hues

Dry season is here,

there’s smoke on the horizon,

hoses near rooftops.

Some snow on the peaks,

June days thirst for its melting.

Rivers run weakly.

Spring’s flowers fading,

summer blooms still aborning.

Seedlings need water.

Red flowers open,

pomegranates in waiting.

We must make sun tea.

Pink roses whisper.

Bougainvillas scream color.

Pastels will enchant.

Epi’s bloomed briefly,

cactus flowers much the same.

I must call my Friends.

Time’s A-wastin’

There’s so much need for Good,

for helping selflessly.

What a waste of energy

to leave the high road for

the low.

Things change,

power passes.

What a waste of time

to place one’s name

on high.

A cyhydedd

Over at Mr. Brewer’s house, PoeticAsides, we are invited to try a form poem. 

The cyhydedd fer is a Welsh couplet (or 2-line stanza) form with 8 syllables per line and an aaend rhyme. It’s as simple as that! Here’s what I tried.

Morning

Every morning, the cars drive by,

thousands of them, I don’t know why.

Maybe they have people to meet,

crucial work on a major street.

Some filled with hope, others with dread,

all on a mill on which they tread.

Always there’s work, so much to do,

sad it is, if they only knew

there’s more each day than what they see,

the sky, sun and beach, you and me.

If they’d pause one day, this I’d tell,

I wish them peace, I wish them well.

First Light

Sunset and rainbows get all the coverage,

like those singers and actors

with really good press agents.

Oh, they have their own virtues,

if one likes that garish kind of thing,

beach goers and hikers,

gathering in hoards, 

oohing and ahing,

pretending to see a green flash,

or a triple arc,

the same crowds quickly dispersing 

to watered down happy hours.

Dawn gets little notice, few raves,

a shame, really, but also a saving grace.

It might not be the same 

If the masses got a sniff of it,

people setting alarms, 

gathering in parks and view areas,

flipping on their shades at the first sign of yellow,

probably adding some kind of Bloody Mary rite to it.

I prefer to have it to myself,

with a few hardy, dew-licked compatriots.

So, let the dawn stay hidden, 

or at least quiet,

a small gift for the early risers,

those who have their tea or coffee,

while they write an ode to its beauty.

Old Guy

Insurance adjusters

with nothing to do,

with no real idea,

nor even a clue,

have concluded the 70’s

are the age for most men,

that time of their lives,

those moments when,

they enter their harrumph phase,

the one after farts,

but it  isn’t really true,m

at least not on my part,

recalling, as I survive, 

at seventy-five,

that I entered my

cootage at age sixty-five,

became and old codger

with a five-year head start.

Unorthodox

Spiritual souls in April

know miracles do have legs.

Observing rabbit holes,

they expect, and believe,

in colored eggs.

A cento

Rules for the Dance

Tread softly, because 

you tread on my dreams. 

The great art of life

is sensation, 

to feel that we exist,

even in pain. 

When suddenly I am old and

start to wear purple,

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick other peoples’ flowers, 

as hope springs eternal in the human breast.  

If I should die,

think only this of me.  

To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield, 

‘‘tis better to have loved and lost

than never to have loved at all. 

Harvested from the writings of Oliver, Byron, Tennyson, Yeats,  Pope, Jenny Joseph and Rupert Brooke