052720d

The day Chalmers learned how fast an alligator could run was his last. His fleet young photographer got several money shots that day.

070819c

tiny kite-shaped frogs
in a plastic-covered cup
need some holes in that

021219b

why couldn't this rain
go where it's needed
nature's undirected

012019d

Jack of the Green

Green Jack dances in the tilted meadow

when darkness falls.

The windows overhead are blocked,

but the sun is shining on fields of flowers

on the other side of the river.

How he got there no one knows.

Perhaps he stowed away wrapped around a lily bulb,

pressed between the pages of a treasured scrapbook,

or in a packet of carrot seeds brought

from the old country by a small child.

Since he came, the plants are thriving,

which formerly languished in their new home,

the stalks are taller, more sturdy, the

flowers bigger and the colors brighter,

In Lagrangia now that Jack is here.

013118c

dandelions
hanging on through January
pollinators sleep

012018

Click ‘Em Together Again

The river tears its bank a new one,

smiting fields and towns alike,

shoving everything aside

in its eagerness to suicide

into the sea.

Call it the water cycle if you will,

but remember when you hit the water

from high enough above,

it's like cement to you,

call it the cement cycle.

No, because water is nothing like cement,

the tsunami that hit Japan a few years ago,

was a bulldozer 100 miles wide,

God's drain backed up,

with fish instead of sewage.

Our globe: no place to raise a family,

if there was any alternative

I'd have my bags packed in an hour;

"No place like home,"

more threat than promise.

112817b

lots for sale

the tornado cleared them out
pretty squares and rectangles of grass

people used to live here
now crickets do
and bees

101316c

gill poems slide down long white necks

mesh with bird flesh for the ascent

the flight of the carp

Publ. Scifaikuest 16, May 2007

081716b

standing cliffside
at the Grand Canyon
dozens of landslides visible
on the distant wall
my mind races ahead

060416

trying hard
to sway only in the breeze
stick insect
knobbier than these twigs
caught by my shutter

050916

the beaver only builds its dam
so it can fish, relax, and chill
woo its mate, raise its kits
it sets to with a will
you tear the beaver's dam apart
because you like the stream
as soon as you are out of sight
it's busy at its meme

Audubon Zoo

sun struggles up into thick wet air
gator's duckweed coat