The male stood guard on a
branch above and then below
and around while the female

painstakingly placed the twigs
in just the right spot weaving
them together into a tight,

reliable cradle for the precious
eggs which would be home for
Cardinal offspring. But they never

used it. All that work and
they never used it. The man
waited and waited in anti-

cipation of a front row seat
to the birthing, feeding and
nurturing right outside his

study window, but nothing. The
nest was abandoned before be-
ing used. He saw a Cowbird there

one day. Did the bird leave
its scent and violate the sanc-
tity of the home? No female Cow-

bird surreptituously slipped
in leaving her eggs in the nest
for the hardworking builders

to function as surrogates for
the lazy thieves. And then the
man wondered if it was his fault.

Did the birds see him on the
other side of the glass between
the slats of the blinds? Was he

the intruder on their privacy?
He sits looking at the abandoned

nest feeling sad and somehow
responsible, in the classic human
response of placing himself in

the center of what’s going on
as if the birds couldn’t possibly
have a life of their own without

any reference to human behavior.

He jogged in his new
running shoes. He can’t
have the running blues.

He sauntered down the
trail sashaying like the
Calypso under sail.

He was having so much
fun — still jogging at the
age of seventy-one.

“I try to be open and accepting but I
get so confused because blacks still
don’t trust me.” Take it easy, Whitey.
You’ve got a lot to learn about social
and cultural dynamics and systems theory

while you sit in the comfort of your
nice home in your nice neighborhood
surrounded by nice, white folk who all
feel fairly comfortable with each other
when you’all aren’t squabbling — some

with whom you might have gone to high
school and college; maybe a relative
or two, fellow church goers, kids in
the Cub Scouts, Webelos, Boy and Girl
Scouts, white schools, soccer, little

league baseball, football, swimming
and the uber-white gymnastics club
all while blacks and Hispanics make
do in the ghetto and barrio, but it
is nice that you, individually, are

trying not to be a racist and you
would like to be able to say that
some of your best friends are…but
you can’t because you are in the
dominant, power structure and you

sure as hell don’t want to give that
up and never ever should be expected
to relinquish anything because you
have earned it and when you think
about it, it’s a bit presumptuous

to cave in to the demands of those
minorities, isn’t it? Who exactly
do they think they are? Maybe they
should take a whole lot more re-
sponsibility for their situation?

See how it goes, Whitey?

After twenty years, I know
I take you for granted, and

while there is something
wonderfully comfortable

about our relationship, and
that’s no excuse, still,

this morning in light of
last night’s dream and the

ache it left, I had the
dreaded sense of life with-

out you and it scared me
and shook the foundations

and reawakened the pain
and I once again ran

trembling fingers over the
scars of abandonment and

I knew again that I love
you even more than the

accumulation of those
losses and I want you to

know that I know how
much I would miss you

and so, I want you to know
that now, today, this

minute, this very second
of our life together.

Self-sufficiency, militarism, and materialism —
the unholy trinity has failed in America
but we, spoiled children of capitalism,
unhappy with our lot, keep looking in
all the wrong places for love. Now
a bombastic, bully, an insecure
sexagenarian infant is tapped
to be the next savior and
the mindless murders on
both sides of the law
send us scurrying
for more guns,
guns, guns,
in our un-
civil
civil-
I-ty
hell
bent
on
he-
l-
l.

now you want to blame
the president for all the
racial unrest; now you
want to point a finger

in his direction and say,
“look, it’s the black guy
in the oval office who
is to blame.” to be more

accurate, if you want
still erroneously to blame
the guy who occupies the
white house, you should

say the half-black/half
white guy, but the beaut-
iful color of his skin
makes him, to your blind

eyes, black alone. he is
not black alone nor is he
white alone. he is both and
if he has his dna tested,

he would find out he is
a few other wonderful things
as well, just like the
rest of us, so get a grip

and get over it and re-
cognize that we all come
out of africa and we are
all the same except for

the amount of melanin we
have, which god has given
us both to protect us
from too much sun and

allow enough sun in de-
pending on where we live,
so god had a pretty great
idea, right? so, can we

please stop the blame game
and get on with finding a
win/win solution like the
president would like?

We would buy cheese,
bring it home, open the plastic
packaging, cut off a piece or two,
wrap up the cheese in it’s
packaging, wrap that in
clear plastic wrap and place
that in a clear, resealable,
plastic bag and place it in the
refrigerator drawer with
other individually
wrapped cheeses and
sliced meats such as turkey
and roast beef.
Then we saw on a T.V. food
program that cheese needs
oxygen, moisture and no
tight, plastic wrapping
because it suffocates
the cheese.
The naked cheeses should be
placed in a plastic container
with a small cup containing
a bit of moist sponge.
The top should be placed on
the container, the container
burped and placed on a
shelf in the refrigerator.
This will allow the cheese
to breathe and remain moist
and not dry out; the cheese will
not chemically or biologically
break down prematurely
and ammonia will not
form on the cheese. It is
all right for varieties to
be in the container together
but the blue cheese should
not touch the other cheeses
for reasons we don’t quite
recall but can guess.
Why does it take so long to
catch on to these things?
I mean years and years and
years of doing something
the same, wrong way.
I know it’s better and
the cheese stays fresh longer
and we don’t see mold
forming very quickly,
but for all those decades of
incorrect cheese packaging,
of smothering and suffocating
the cheese, for which I do
feel guilty,
I don’t ever remember
an ammonia smell or taste.
That would be the smell
and taste of death
and I would feel
even more guilty
just thinking about
the Swiss, Blue,
Cheddar, Leyden
and Brie silently
gasping for air
in a cold, dark
place and the
aged Gouda, known
as Old Amsterdam,
making its
last gasp after
surviving all
those
years.

We go on with our
lives when all hell
breaks loose in what
people believe is
retributive justice
for prejudicial shoot-
ings of minorities
and those who live
by the sword die
by the sword and
there are wars and
rumors of wars and
there is no restor-
ative justice, just
vengeance in the
streets of our cities
and throughout
the Middle East
and now Western
Europe and blow-
back and blow-
back and more
blowback and we
have lost our way
like lost little lambs
and that’s what we
are — God’s lost
little lambs killing
our way to hell
without knowing
that The Lamb
wins, The Lamb
wins, The Lamb
wins.

Keeping Labs on a leash
when they are at the beach
is tantamount to torture
for the dog and owner each.
But the lawmakers, beseech
the owners in the association each
to corral their dogs and apply the leash
because someone complained
of a loose dog at the beach
harassing little children
when the dog just wanted to play
but the frightened mother yelled, “Stay away.”
The owner tried to allay her fears
but she must have been frightened for years
and now the lawmakers in a knee jerk reach
have laid down the law
and sent out a notice,
“Leash the beast when at the beach.”
Don’t they know that’s tantamount
to torture for owner and dog each?
Maybe they’ll just in the water stay
until the woman and the children go away
and when from the water they emerge
the owner whistling a funeral dirge,
the leash will immediately be applied
and by the law they will eternally abide
even if such abiding is tantamount
to torture for owner and Lab each.

The town is all messed up
with road construction.
Really, it’s maddening.
One has to plan in advance
how to get from point A to
point B and then there is
no guarantee that such
planning will pan out.
Is this sounding like life?
I can hear my mother, who
was anything but patient,
say, “Be patient, dear.
This, too, shall pass,” and
other truisms and platitudes,
which she hardly practiced
but regularly preached and
which, maddeningly, are true.
In a month, all the con-
struction will be complete
and we will say, “My, my,
isn’t this nice?”