NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS: Five New Poems

6

Silver Lining

The longest journey

is the shortest way

when you don’t know

how to get there.

Why me, God? you shout,

and storm away in anger.

And then you die the little

death and thank God

for your suffering, and

you go the rest of the way

joyful in your blessing.

7

The Thirtieth Bird

I sipped my coffee, pondering,

wondering, wondering, wondering,

when all I really had to do

was to just wait and see.

Like a bird lighting on a tree,

an idea always comes to me;

and I gratefully study

the new bird in my tree.

A bird lighted this morning,

a bird I knew too well,

but the emotions it awakened

overcame me.

It takes grit and sensitivity

to tell this bird’s story,

but few poets have the courage

to bare their soul this way.

A million birds of every feather

went on a quest for their Creator;

only thirty completed the journey,

and looked into the Face of God.

The Face that these rare birds saw

was not what they expected,

and they rested and grew strong

in their great realization.

I took another sip of coffee,

and one more for good measure;

but before I could steel my courage,

my bird had flown away.

8

Wasteland of Misery

I’m stuck in a crack

between this world and that,

and I fear stepping into my life.

This happens every now and then

when I have things I don’t want to do,

and the longer I put them off the wider

the crack gets. I used to fool myself by

replacing one responsibility with another,

but the crack only got wider; and now I

bite the bullet and suffer the conflict

of not doing what I have to do and just

going out and doing it, and I pine my

life away in a wasteland of misery.

 9

                          

Tough Love

“Stop cheating,”

said her grandmother,

for the third or fourth time,

but Kelly May, who loved to win,

reacted like a spoiled child,

“Then I’m going to play by myself

and cheat all I want!” Three weeks

later, Kelly May called her grandmother,

bawling on the phone, “Grandma, the

cat ate my bird,” and grandma replied,

“Tough luck kid, that’s life.”

10

God Within

Flat, existential plane

of life and limb,

toiling, toiling, toiling

for profit unseen.

One day a voice speaks

from within:

“Go to the casino,”

and all the profit

that you win

goes to life and limb,

and the voice confirms

God within.