How can it get anymore

basic than water breaking,

amniotic fluid flowing

down legs, placenta

popping and a baby

emerging from the darkness

grunted out of the watery

womb into life with deep,

deep breaths by Muslim,

Jewish, Christian, Buddhist,

Taoist, Sikh and, among

others, atheist women?  Why

do their men insist on killing

those children as they grow

into soldiers and why do

those who suffered so much

in childbirth and experienced

that common thread of pain

and joy and ecstasy permit

it and when, oh, when will

they join in the solidarity

of birth and say, no more

to the pain that knows no

joy or ecstasy only the

termination of that joy

and the blood lust of

killing another male’s

offspring?

1. We jogged among trees

till the conservationists

cut down the red pines,

2. then we jogged no more

in the place we ran for years

but then we went back

3. and realized that

the plan was all for the best

observing the growth

4. of new, native plants

and all the budding white pines

that started to grow

5. as we made our way

with native Michigan plants

blossoming in sand.

He wants poetically to speak out

on the issues of the day,

but so many with greater clout

have left him in dismay,

by speaking cogently about

an amount

of injustices in great array,

and so he has decided to

take account

and let the greater voices

have their way

and refrain from speaking

at least this particular

day.

The parks’ people,

khaki-clad,

daypacks stuffed

with official documents

and some granola

bars, surely,

stopped and looked

around at us jogging

up from behind.

I quipped, dog leash

in hand, “I know

I have to have the

Chocolate Lab on a

six-foot leash, but

does the leash need

to be in my hand?”

Slightly officious,

and somewhat

less than amused, one

stated, ”There’s

a joker on

every trail,” and then the

other

said, rhetorically,

“Of course.”

We stopped and chatted

while the dog took the

opportunity to collapse

on the ground after

the thirty-minute

jog on leash because

labs just want to have

fun, stop, sniff, pee, poop

and then catch up in a

real romp but

could not.

The officials mentioned a

remote but not

too far park where dogs

get to run free.

“The dog will love it, “

they opined. We went and

jogged up and down and up

and down steep sand dunes,

sand filling our

running shoes as we went.

Eventually, we arrived

back where we had

started barely able to

lift our sand laden shoes.

Collapsing on a log to

empty the shoes, we

sighed and the dog

just wagged his

big behind being

wagged

by his big bushy

tail as if to ask, “Can

we come back?

Please, please,

please?”

Still, somewhat warm light reflected

weakly off the pale, green, soft, toothy,

leaves of the beech speaking

toward the blazingly

bright, red, five-fingered maples typing

out silent, glistening code as they

fluttered in the breeze toward

brown oaks which

wouldn’t pass on the word because of

their unreflective dullness, so

the leaves held the message

close to their trunk and

kept the secret longer into the winter than

any other tree, including the

reluctant beeches,when

the oaks, too, called out

the code announcing, as they finally

dropped their leaves onto the cold,

white tomb which would soon

cover their tough,

leathery but lifeless leaves beneath

another layer, the death and

burial of the now completely

finished season.

The big, lumbering Chocolate Lab, frightened

by his own shadow, wouldn’t venture far out

into the pine grove behind the house before the

family retired for the evening, until his Alpha

male, hunting instincts kicked in one evening

at the sight of something wild behind the water-

fall.  He took off with torque previously unseen

by his new adoptive parents and having chased

away whatever it was, loped back to the house

after taking a minute to mark his territory. His

mother asked him, “Weren’t you afraid of  the

dark?” in a gentle voice, to which he simply

wagged his tail and retired to the bedroom for

the evening. As she closed the door behind

them, she thought to herself, thank heavens,

it wasn’t a skunk.