He would stay
the course
especially without a mother.
He would stay
until they
went to another
place.
He stayed
and eventually
they went.
And then he would
visit them in their new place
and with the new
ones of theirs
in their space.
It was strange.
He had been father and they
son and daughter
and he kept
thinking that way,
locked in an old paradigm.
“Brother, could you
spare a dime,
for me to figure out
a new paradigm?”
They broke out
and grew up and
became adults and
looked another way.
Would they, could they
become friends and fraternal lovers
or linger in the netherworld
of not knowing who
they were with each other?
Did he even want to
go another way
or just nurse old wounds
and stay
stuck?
“Brother, Here’s your dime.
I can’t find a new paradigm.”
But what choice did he have?
Could his love
transform from
parental to filial?
Had there been
too much water under the
bridge proverbial
or over the dam? Damn.
Had there been too much
stuff in the old place
cluttering new space?
Only time would tell,
and a lot more than
a little grace.

At the grill by the pool, he was asked,
“Do roadrunners fly?”

He thought to himself, my, oh, my,
why do they want to know if those birds fly?

But right off the top of his head,
he said he’d give it the old college try.

So he said they run so fast they take off
like a low flying plane but only in spurts so short.

He googled it and he was right. Running at
seventeen mph, they aren’t the flying bird sort.

So he googled about what they eat when they
are running fast and flying low.

He learned they swallow rattlesnakes, scorpions,
tarantulas, mice, rats and other vermin whole.

He wondered if they make pets to take on hikes
in the Phoenix Mountain preserve to protect him,
body and soul.

They would be off leash, against laws of the city,
but having them on a leach would be such a pity.

The bird couldn’t run nor fly distances short,
nor catch the critters of a poisonous sort.

So, he guesses he will have to rely
on his snake trained Chocolate Lab, his gift to ply,

to keep him and his wife in a safe place
while they hike in the mountains at a good pace.

And when they get home and he grills some dinner,
if those folks are there again, he’ll tell them

road runners might fly, but a well-trained
Chocolate Lab in the mountains is the real winner.

He felt a nagging ache
on the outside of his right
foot
only to realize he
had popped a bunionette.
Now, isn’t that cute?
But oh, how he would like
such misery to forget.
He mumbled that the
aging process is
for the birds
when he heard
his feet exclaim,
“Forget that bird song.
What about us old dogs?
The birds just peep, but
we will be howling
in sympathy as
you limp along.”
He guessed a point
was made by his
loyal pups.
Until he could have
surgery, he’d give them
relief with hideous
things called drug store
bunionette cups.
He just can’t give
up on his loyal pups.
For twenty-six thousand
miles running, they have
been there every step
along the way.
Forty-five years of
jogging and that ain’t
hay.
So, he’s good to the
old dogs even if
they now howl
instead of bark all
day.

Yes, they have keen eyes and ears
and watch every move, hear every
word, all of them, the soft, tender
words that almost always are spoken
to them by the gods, but the loud,
threatening, scary words that the
gods shout at each other mostly
after the sun goes down and the
gods have indulged in nectar and
libations. It is then that the
children pull the covers over
their heads and hum nursery rhymes
to themselves, over and over and
over until the shouting ceases and
the castle is quiet. Then as they
grow and the resentments mount
they think they know all about
the gods, but they can never, ever
know the longing, the ache, the
remorse, the guilt, the shame and
the incredible love the all-too-
human gods have for each other,
not, at least, until they be-
come gods themselves.

Don’t worry about this terrorist
or that; they are small potatoes;
they are just symptoms of that
which is scared and striking back,
blowing back against that of which
we should all be worried — Pluto
relentlessly accumulating, Pluto
grabbing the strings of the three
marionettes who used to make the
rules, interpret the rules, judge
the rules and administer the rules
but who are ruled and who now
dance deliriously through the once
hallowed halls. We watch what Pluto
decides to show; read what Pluto
wants us to read; we stay in our
homes while Pluto prowls the streets
keeping us “safe” and passive;
and we cheer the boys and girls
as Pluto decides when and where
and how the kiddies will fight the
boogeyman way over there so he
won’t come over here, and we stare
at our devises, take photos of our-
selves, look out our blinds and fear
that those who hate us for no good
reason, except that we are “except-
ional,” are coming to terrorize us,
torture us, hack our heads off our
necks with dull knives, pour propel-
lants on our pets, drench us in
flammables and strike a match first
on our children so we have to watch
them writhe in unbelievable anguish
and then watch each other incinerate
and vanish in a puff of smoke. And
Pluto, the downgraded planet, is a
rising star while everyone else flies
into Pluto’s black hole of poverty
and fear, but with no one there
for Pluto to pawn his wares, will
his rising star become a shooting
star burning up in the acrid atmos-
phere of his own flatulence
rising from deep in the earth?

He looks at the skin on the top of his hand,
parched, translucent leather with blue streams running beneath.
He looks at the hair on his forearms,
dry, palo verde branches planted in a bumpy, desert sheath.
He looks at his legs crossed at his feet
and recalls mounds of muscle bulging beneath
the now bony Saguaros flat on their side.
Time to put on a long-sleeved shirt and long pants;
dying desert plants need to hide
from the fierce desert sun.

It was so easy to be brave
playing cowboys and Indians, or
G.I. Joe to the Nazis.
You got shot; you got up.
Your mother called you home
for dinner.
You waved goodbye
looking forward to the next day
when all the previous day’s
cowboys and Indians,
G.I.Joes and Nazis would
build a fort in the
vacant lot generously called
a prairie
and maybe you
would run home to
sneak a swig of bourbon
from the
bottle in the cabinet
by the sink
and a couple of
cigarettes from the pack of
Chesterfields on the end table
to smoke in the fort
as a reward for
a good day’s effort.
Back when everyone was ten,
it was easy to be brave.
Now, those kids
have given up smoking
and drinking on doctor’s orders,
watch the nightly news,
lock the doors,
go to bed and pray
not to have bad dreams.

She hardly could hobble across the stage into the limelight at the seniors’ variety show.

She was so short they had to put the microphone down about as far as it would go. She walked with a three-pronged cane, which she held with a misshapen hand at the end of a short, misshapen arm — birth defects and rheumatoid arthritis. Her legs were bowed so badly she rocked when she walked.

Then she opened her misshapen mouth and they were off to the standup comedy races — self-deprecating, dark, death, gallows humor, side-splitting, slap-your-hand-on-your-knee humor.

She said that the IRS and Social Security had determined that she had died in 1985.

It was then she realized that while she thought she had arthritis, she really had rigor mortis.

She had even died before her husband died and she never knew it. She could have spent fewer years missing him; in fact, she needn’t have missed him at all and could have avoided all that unnecessary suffering. She emphasized how he should have missed her.

She said people keep telling her how good she looks, just like what people exclaim when they look into a casket, “My, doesn’t she look good!”

Then staring beyond the light into the darkness she closed by telling everyone how good they looked.

It brought the house down.

As she hobbled off stage, the old folks roared their approval.

She had great timing and knew her audience well and the audience was glad to be alive to have heard her. She gifted them that evening. For a few moments, they all stopped complaining about their aches and pains.

Her monologue was titled “Misery Loves Company.”

He sits in the hot tub
looking up
at the tall, palm trees
swaying in the breeze.

As the trees
sway in the breeze,
he can see Piestewa Peak
behind them,
across Route 51.

What fun!

It’s a beautiful sight —
trees, mountain and
desert birds in flight.

Soon he will be back
in Michigan where he
saw a short, plastic palm tree
in a yard with plastic, pink
flamingoes numbering three.

He’s sure they have a few
of those in Phoenix, too.

The real palms in Arizona,
though not native, have adapted
just right
and all are just the right height,

Just like all the living
trees
in Michigan,
at least according to a politician
who wanted to be
president but lost.
Was it time three?

No one seems to know why
he said that, but he was right.
The trees in Michigan
are just the right height.

But they are in Arizona, too.
I think everywhere, don’t you?

The trees are just the right
height — even the plastic
palm. But who knows
about those flamingoes?
Right height or no,
I think they have to go.

This St. Patrick’s Day I wish
to offer you a greeting, my love.
It is that you have constant bliss
and of all things good never to miss
nor the descent of the heavenly dove.

This St. Patrick’s Day I offer
my love to you, with any luck,
and all my heart do proffer
none but riches for thy coffer;
now get out there and kick some butt.